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THE THEOLOGY 
OF ST PAUL 


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<Gica a> 
OF SAINT PAUL 


/ 
BY FERNAND PRAT, S.J. 


Translated from the Tenth French Edition 
BY JOHN L. STODDARD 


VOLUME II 


THE NEWMAN BOOKSHOP 
Westminster, Md. 





NIHIL OBSTAT : 


T. McLavaut_in, S.T.D., 
Censor Deputatus. 


IMPRIMATUR: 


Epm. Can. SURMONT, 
Vicarius Generatis. 


WESTMONASTERII, 
@ie 17% Martit, 1927. 


NOTE 


1. The bibliography and index will be found at the end 
of this volume. 

2. Except when otherwise stated, the patristic references 
are to Migne’s Patrology, the roman numeral indicating the 
volume and the arabic the column. The authar’s name 
indicates sufficiently whether the Latin or Greek Patrology 
is referred to. For example, Hilary, De Trin., viii, 47, X, 
22, means: the De Trinitate of St Hilary, book viii, No. 47, 
Migne’s Latin Patrology, vol. X, column 22. The Greek or 
Latin fathers who have already appeared in the Leipzig or 
Vienna editions are quoted according to these editions. The 
quotations from Philo are usually from Mangey’s edition, 
that of Cohn and Wendland being still incomplete. 

3. The key-number printed after and above a title denotes 
the edition. Thus, Cornely, Introd.?, means: second edition 
of the Introductio historica et critica in S. Scripturam of P. 
Cornely. ‘When there is no possibility of confusion, the title 
is often given in an abridged form. 

4. In the case of ancient or modern commentators, it has 
not seemed necessary always to mention the volume and 
page. If Estius or Theodoret is quoted on Rom. viii, 28, 
it will easily be understood that recourse must be had to the 
commentary on the text in question. 

s. For the Greek text of St Paul, we usually follow Nestle’s 
edition, which everyone has at hand (Novum Testamentum 
Graece et Latine>, Stuttgart, 1914); but we depart from it in 
regard to certain orthographical peculiarities, and sometimes 
also as regards punctuation. The Latin text is that of the 
Clementine Vulgate. 


ry 


; 

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CONTENTS 


BOOK I 
PAULINISM 


CHAPTER I—DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 


I—THE GOSPEL OF PAUL : : : : “ “ 


. General Notion - - 
2. The Gospel of Paul and the Mystery of Christ . 
3. Elements of Paulinism~ - - 


II—PAULINE THEOLOGY IN EMBRYO - = = 2 i 
1. Christ the Centre - S es : 3 : 
2. Not as Dying - . - : , z 
3. But as the Saviour . : . ) : 
4. Synoptical View - - - 3 , : 


CHAPTER II—THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 


I—PavuL AND JESUS” - eae 7 


. Paul against Jesus 
2. Apparent Indifference of ‘Paul tb the Mortal Life of 
Jesus - 
3. Clear Statement and Explanation of the Phenomenon - 
II—THE APOSTOLIC CATECHESIS - : 4 : 
1. Its Existence - - - a 2 3 
2. Its Historical, Dogmatic, Liturgical, and Moral 
Contents : : = : 
IlI--FOREIGN INFLUENCES - - . : 4 a 
. Judaism- : . 
. Hellenism - 


. Hellenized Oriental Religions . - - - 
. The True Sources of Paulinism - 


PWN 


BOOK II 
PREPARATION FOR THE REDEMPTION 


CHAPTER I—HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 


I—PAULINE PSYCHOLOGY = : x : is r 
1. Biblical Foundation 4 2 . a : 
2. Hellenic Contributions - - : Z - 
3. The Human Composite - - - - - 
4. Eclectic Language 


Vil 


vill THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


PAGE 
II—TuHE REIGN OF SIN - : z : ; + eS? 
1. Origin of Sin - - - . - 2 

2. Extension of Sin - . - - - - 
3. The Empire of Satan - . - - - 62 
4. Elemental Spirits - - . - - ae SF 
ITI—SLAVERY OF THE FLESH AND LIBERTY OF THE SPIRIT - - 69 
. False Theories - : ‘ “6509 
2. The Flesh and the Spirit - . - ey 
3. The Flesh and Sin - - - - - 74 
4. Résumé - : . - . - - 76 

CHAPTER II—THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 
I—DESIGNS OF MERCY - - - + . wee 
. The Will to Save - - - - 7 
2. Different Aspects of the Divine Will - - - ) 
II—THE REDEEMING PLANS - - - : - =~ 3482 
. Grace and Freé Will - - - 82 
a Order of Intention and Order of Execution - - 85 
3. Extension of the Divine Plan - - - - 8&9 
I1I—PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS - - . - 04 
1. The First Stage of Humanity - . - - 94 
2. The Era of Promise - - - - - ° 96 
3. The Régime of the Law - . : - - 99 
4. The Elements of the World - - - - 104 
5. The Fulness of the Timas - - : - - 107 

BOOK III 
THE PERSON OF THE REDEEMER 
CHAPTER I—THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 

I—CHRIST BEFORE THE AGES - . wack : - 4IY 
. Paul and Christ - . - - eRe DY 
i Eternal Pre-existence of Christ . - . - 113 
ao gees Curist Lorp - - - - . - 116 
. Our Lord Jesus Christ - - - - 116 
2. The Lord, God’s Proper Name - : - - 4.7 
3. Prayers and Doxologies in Honour of the Lord Jesus - 119 
ae CuRIsT Gop - . - - 124 
. The Divinity of Christ and ee Apothieoses - 124 
2. Four Illuminating Texts - - 125 
3. Synthetic View - - - - - - 129 


CHAPTER II—RELATIONS OF THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 


I—THE TRINITY IN UNITY - - - - - 132 


. The Persons placed in Juxtaposition by Co-ordination 132 
2 Intervening in the Working of their Eternal Relations 134 


CONTENTS 


II—THE Retlan THE SON, AND THE HOLy GHOST 


. God the Father - - 
s The Son of God - 


3. The Spirit of the Father and the Son 


I Zara RELATIONS . 


. Christ is First in All Things 
2. The Rock of Israel - 


CHAPTER III—JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 


I—THE HuMAN NaTuRE OF CaBrRIstT - 
1. Christ truly Man, but God-Man 
2. Mystery of this Union - 
II—THE HISTORICAL FIGURE OF JESUS 


1, What Paul tells us of Jesus 
2. What he could tell us of Him 


BOOK IV 


THE WORK OF REDEMPTION 


CHAPTER I—THE REDEEMING MISSION 


I—THE AMBASSADOR OF GOD : 


1. Object of the Redeeming Mission 


2. The Mediator of the New Covenant 


3. No other Mediator but He 
aa NEW ADAM - - 


. Parallel between the Two epee . 


2. Role and Quality of the Second Adam 


- 


- 


CHAPTER II—THE REDEEMING DEATH 


I—SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS - 
. Real Sacrifice - 
=! Realizing the Ancient Types 
3. Voluntary Sacrifice 
II—THE VALUE OF THE REDEEMING DEATH 
. Subjective or Moral Value 


A Three Explanations of the Objective Value : 


- 


demption, Substitution, Satisfaction - 


3. Doctrine of the Fathers - 
II1I—DoctTrinat SYNTHESIS “ 


. The Great Principle of Solidarity 
5 Soteriological Value of the Resurrection of Christ 
3. Unity and Harmony of Paul’s Doctrine 


CHAPTER III—THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF 


REDEMPTION 


I—THE RECONCILIATION EFFECTED - 


. The Wrath of God - 
2. Aspects of the Reconciliation 


- 


. 


214 
217 


x THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


PAGE 

II—THE oe ae ENEMIES - - - - - 221 
. Sin, the Flesh, and Uae - - - = - aon 

2. The Mosaic Law - : - - - 223 


BOOK V 
THE CHANNELS OF REDEMPTION 


CHAPTER I—FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 


I—-JUSTIFYING FAITH - - - . - - - 233 
1. Protestant Faith and Catholic Faith - 


: 835 
2. Nature of Faith - - - - - - 234 
3. Object of Faith - - - - - - 237 
4. Value of Faith - - - . - 239 
II—JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH - - : - - - 242 
1. The Justice of God - - - - - 242 
2. How Justice is born of Faith - - - - 246 
Lui eren ree - - - - . - - 250 
. The Idea of Sanctity - - - - - 250 
2 asics and Sanctity - - . . - 251 
CHAPTER II—THE SACRAMENTS 

I—BaPTIsM - - . - - - - 254 
. Manifold Symboiistt of Baptism - - - - 254 
2. Mystical Death and Resurrection - - - an 

3- Faith and Baptism - - - - - 2 
II—CONFIRMATION - - - . é : - 261 
IlII—TwHeEe EvucHarist 2 Z . : - 263 
1. Paul’s Formulas - - - - : - 263 
2. Allusions to Sacrifice - - - - - 267 
IV—HOoOLy ORDER - - - - - - - 268 
V—MaRRIAGE - - - - - - - ate 

CHAPTER III—THE CHURCH 

I—THE PAULINE CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH - - - 275 
1. The Names of the Church - - : - 375 
2, The Church of God - a : 5 evoke 
3. Notes of the Church - - . - - 279 
II—Tue Lire OF THE CHURCH - : . - - 283 
1. The Mystical Christ . - - . - 283 

2. The Mysticai Body of Christ - - - - 28 

3. The Holy Spirit, Soul of the Church - - - 28 
4. The Spirit and Christ - - - - - agi 
5: The Communion of Saints - - - - 294 
in Christ) / ésuseu- - - . : - 297 


IIi—THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH - 
1. Ecclesiastical Dignitaries - 
2. Coercive Power of the Church 
3. Résumé and Conclusions | - : 


» 
S 


CONTENTS 


BOOK VI 
THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION 


CHAPTER I—THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 


I—THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY : : : 
1. Foundations of Christian Morality . 2 . 
2. The Will of God - - : f 
3. Baptismal Regeneration - y . : 
4. New Relations : - 
‘Shea OF SOCIAL MORALITY - : rs 
. The Christian and the Civil Authority - 
2. The Christian Family : : 
3. Christian Marriage . : : : 5 
III—PRecepTs OF PERSONAL MORALITY 


1. The Three Theological Virtues 
2. Pre-eminence of Charity - . . - 
3. Virtues and Vices - : - . 4 
4. Prayer - = 2 
5. Little Virtues - 

eee ates PERFECTION - ‘ : ‘ " 


. The Way of the Comnaclay - - - - 
2. The Imitation of Jesus Christ - - 
3. Christian Asceticism - 

4. The Eucharist, the Seal of Perfection 


CHAPTER II—THE LAST THINGS 


I—POoOINTS OF CONTACT WITH JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY - 


. Difficulty of the Subject 
z The Present Age and the Age to ‘Come - 
3. The True Sources of New Testament Eschatology 


II—DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION - A : : * 


1. Death and the Hereafter - - : : : 
2. The Resurrection of the Just - - - - 
3. The Fate of the Living - : . : 


I{1I—TuHeE Day OF THE LoRD - zZ : 2 _ E 


. The Parousia - ~ 4 2 : : 
34 The Last Judgement . : : 
3. Separation of the Good from the. Wicked . - 


IV—THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL THINGS ° : 7 : 


1, The Kingdom of Su anc of Baas " ° 3 
2. The End - : 7 * 


DETACHED NOTES 


L—PAUL’S MYSTERY AND PAGAN MYSTERIES 


I—BIBLICAL AND CLASSICAL MEANING OF MYZSTHPION  .- ‘ 


IJ—ALLEGED BORROWINGS OF oa PauL FROM THE Facer 
MYSTERIES - ns . 


x1 


383 


xii THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


M—/N CHRIST JESUS 


PAGE 


I—USE OF THE PHRASE - - - - : - 391 
II—MEANING OF THE PHRASE - . - : - - 392 
1. In St John - - - - . : - 392 

2. In St Paul - - - - s . - 392 

III—/N CHRIST and IN THE SPIRIT . ‘ ; - 304 


N—THE GOSPEL 


I—Tue ‘‘ GospeL’’ APART FROM ST PAUL - : = - 396 

. Use of the Word - - - 396 

2. micaniae of the Word in the Synoptists - - 396 
II—TuHE ‘‘ GosPeL”’ IN St Pau - = z - 397 
1, “* Preaching the Gospel” and the in Gospel . - 307 

2. The Gospel of Paul : : - 398 
IlI—TuHeE GOSPEL OF CHRIST - . S : 3 - 399 


O—PSYCHOLOGICAL LANGUAGE OF ST PAUL 


I—NOTION OF THE WorD “ Bopy ” - - - - 401 
1. Use of the Word - - - - - - 401 

2. Remarkable Cases - - - - - 401 

2 aren OF THE WorpD ‘“ FLESH ” - - - 402 
. The Word ‘ Flesh ’’ in its Bad Sones - - - 402 

2. The “‘ Flesh ” in the Language of Paul- —- - 402 
III—NoTION oF THE WorpD “ Sou”? - - - - 404 
IV—NOTION OF THE Worp ‘‘ Spirit” - : - - 405 


P—ANGELS AND DEMONS 


I—~JEWIsH IDEAS OF THE WORLD oF SPIRITS - - - 408 
II—DISTINCTION BETWEEN ANGELS AND DEMONS - - - 408 
ITI—HIERARCHY OF ANGELS AND DEMONS - - - - 411 
IV—THE DEMONS IN THE THEOLOGY oF St Pau - . - 413 
1. Demons and Sin - . - - - - 413 

2. Abode of the Demons~ - : . - - 413 

3. Demons and Idols - : - - - - 414 

V-—THE CHOIRS OF ANGELS ACCORDING TO St Pau - - 414 


Q—THE ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD 


I—THE SIGNIFICANT EVOLUTION OF THE WORD orotyefov - - 417 
II—TuHe ‘‘ WorLD”’ IN THE WRITINGS OF ST PAuL - . - 419 
III—MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION 7d crotyeta To0 xéopov - - 421 


CONTENTS 


R—CHRISTOLOGICAL TEXTS 
I—LIistT oF TExTs - . 3 


II—THE Se seer peerie y OF THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 
1. Theological Ideas - - - 
2. Construction of the Phrase 
3- The Son of God ARES 4 to the Flesh and according 
to the Spirit - - 


III—‘‘ GoD WHO HATH US CEESED THE CHURCH WITH HIS OWN 
BLoop ”’ . = : ‘ f x 

. The True Reming . ree - - 

:, The Meaning - : Z : 
IV—THE HYMN TO CHRIST TRIUMPHANT - - 


. The True Reading - - : : 
zi The Meaning . : - “ = 


S—TRINITARIAN TEXTS 
I—ListT oF TExTS : = S - : % re 
II—CRITICISM OF SEVERAL TEXTS : e : 2 


T—DOMINUS AUTEM SPIRITUS EST (2 Cor. iii, 17) 


I—THE PRESENT POSITION - - - - 

II—TueE SusjecT OF THE PHRASE 18 6 Kipwos, NOT 70 mvedpa - 
IlI—‘O Kvpws SIGNIFIES CHRIST - - - . . 
I1V—To IIvetpa Is NOT THE PERSON OF THE Hoty Spirit - - 

V—To IIveGpa IS THE SPIRIT AS OPPOSED TO THE LETTER : 


U—PATRISTIC THEORIES OF REDEMPTION 


I—THE THEORY OF REDEMPTION AND THE RIGHTS OF THE 
DEVIL - - - - - - - - 


II—SvuBSTITUTION AND SATISFACTION - : . 2 a 
JJI—THE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY - b . ‘ 


V—‘* FAITH ” IN ST PAUL 


I—STATISTICS AND EVIDENCE ‘ c 


1, The Verb ‘‘ to Believe” - a : é , 
2. The Word “ Faith ”’ 2 : z ‘ P 


II—JUSTIFYING FAITH, THE FORM OF WHICH IS CHARITY 


III—THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF JUSTIFYING FAITH - - 


1. The Dogma ‘‘ Sola Fide” - ‘ : 
2. How and Why Faith Justifies - - : i 


IV—THE FaITH OF JESUS CHRIST - . . : x 


xill 


PAGE 
424 
424 
424 
425 


425 


427 
427 
428 


429 


429 
430 


431 
431 


435 
435 
437 
438 
439 


444 


XIV THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


W—MAN’S JUSTICE AND GOD’S JUSTICE 


PAGE 
va eae IN MANS - - - - - . - 456 
. Preliminary Notions - - - - 456 
2. Forensic Justice or Real Justice? - - - - 456 
3. Justice Imputed or Justice Inherent? - . - 457 
4. Eschatological Justice or Actual Justice? - - 458 
Il—Paut’s IDEA OF THE JUSTICE OF GoD - : : 465 
X—ON BAPTISM 
I—To BaPTiIzz AND BAPTISM - - - : - - 461 
II—To Baprize In CuHrist (es Xptordv) . : : - 462 
III—To BaptizE IN THE NAME OF CHRIST (eis 76 dvopa)——- - 463 
IV—BATH OF THE PROSELYTES AND CHRISTIAN BAPTISM : - 466 
Y—VIRTUES AND VICES 
I—St Pavur’s Lists - - - - : : - 469 
1. Lists of Christian Virtues - . - 469 
2. Lists of Vices and Sinners - - - - 469 
II—THE WORDS DENOTING CHARITY - : : - 470 
I1I—Sr Pavt’s ASCETIcIsM —- - es : : - 472 
Z—JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 
I—THe DuRATION OF THE MESSIANIC TIMES - - - 474 
II—Tue RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD - : : - 475 
APPENDIX - - - - = : r a ae hy 
BIBLIOGRAPHY - - - : . : ‘ - 485 
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY - . : : P - Bor 
ALPHABETICAL INDEX ; - - . - “ - 504 
EXEGETICAL INDEX - - “ . c : - 509 


PHILOLOGICAL INDEX “ : * 3 - 4 - 583 


BOOK I 
PAULINISM 





CHAPTER I 
DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 


I—TuHE GOSPEL OF PAUL 


1. General Notion. 2. The Gospel of Paul and the Mystery of Christ. 
3. Elements of Paulinism. 


fs Y Paulinism is meant the teaching inculcated by 
the Doctor of the Gentiles, considered in its 
particular characteristics and in the organic 
sequence of its ideas. As the word corresponds 
to an accurate conception, and as it has in its 
favour the fact that it is really needed, we think it very 
advantageous to retain it, after having first purged it of its 
rationalistic dross. 

The differences in tone, ideas, and style which give to the 
sacred writers their distinctive physiognomy and individuality, 
impressed historians and exegetes from the first. To be con- 
vinced of this, we have only to read the prefaces in which St 
Jerome characterizes the prophets, as well as the pages of St 
Irenzeus, Eusebius, and other Fathers on the symbolism of 
the four animals of Ezechiel applied to the evangelists. A 
glante makes evident the fact that the Book of Wisdom does 
not resemble Ecclesiastes, and that the Fourth Gospel has a 
very different style to that of the three Synoptists, and that 
St James has not the same point of view as St Paul. The 
preaching of the latter did not fail at first to excite some 
astonishment in a section of the Christian community. If 
these did not dispute his right to preach to the Gentiles, they 
were at least surprised that he exempted them from the 
observance of the Mosaic Law. The matter was deemed 
sufficiently serious to be referred to the apostles and the 
mother-church at Jerusalem. There Paul won his case; but 
this victory did not protect him from the calumnies and hostile 
manoeuvres to which he was exposed all his life. Long 
after, the Elders of Jerusalem occupied themselves with these 
imputations, and Paul, on their advice, thought it well openly 
to acknowledge the respect which he still felt for the religious 
institutions of his people. This does not prove at all that 
Paul taught a doctrine of his own, or that there was in the 
early Church a conflict between one pulpit or altar and 
another; but it is at least a sign that all the preachers of 
the Gospel did not give the same prominence and importance 
to the abolition of the Law, to the liberty of the Gentiles, and 
to their perfect equality with the Jews; otherwise the dis- 

3 


4 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


cussions, dissensions, and misunderstandings, instead of con- 
tinuing, would have been cut short at once. 

There are not two Gospels, two messages of salvation. 
The true, the only Gospel is that which Paul teaches in 
accord with all the other apostles.1 Anathema to anyone 
who preaches another! But, continues the Apostle, it is not 
another Gospel: ‘‘ it is only the attempt of a few persons to 
spread discord among you and to pervert the Gospel of 
Christ.’’? He ironically concedes to the Corinthians that they 
would be justified in listening to his enemies, if these were 
preaching another Christ, or conferring another Spirit, or 
proclaiming another Gospel ;° but that is an absurd hypothesis, 
which is destroyed by merely stating it; for there is only one 
Gospel, just as there is only one Christ and only one Holy 
Spirit. Yet, if there are not two Gospels, there are different 
ways of preaching the same Gospel, according to times, 
places, and persons. Paul declared that he had received, as 
his share of the work, the Gospel of the uncircumcision,‘ as 
Peter had received that of the circumcision. 

Let us admit that the explanation given by Tertullian is 
correct: Non ut aliud aliter, sed ut alter altis praedicet: that 
““ the Gospel of the uncircumcision ’’ means the preaching to 
the uncircumcised, and that the two apostles agree to limit 
not the exclusive field of their apostolate—neither of them 
ever understood it in this way—but the special field in which 
their action should be carried on. It always happens that a 
different audience necessitates, if not a different theme, at 
least a different mode of presenting the same Gospel subject. 
This is what the best authorities understand by the Gospel 
off Pauls 


2. He explains this himself in the final doxology of the 
Epistle to the Romans: 


Glory be to him, that is powerful to establish you according to my 
gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ and the revelation of the 
mystery which was kept secret from eternity, but which now is made 
manifest to all nations by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the 
precept of the eternal God, for the obedience of faith.® 





PSY Corexve tl *Galei7: 852 COrex) PAs * Gal. ii, 8. 
* On the meaning of the word “ Gospel ”’ see Note N, p. 396. 
® Rom. xvi, 25-26; 


T@ S€ Svvapévy buds arnpitat 25. Ei gut potens est vos confirmare 

A. (a) kata 70 evayyéddv pou Kaltd = secundum Evangelium meum et 
Kjpuypa “I. X., praeconium J. C., 

(6) xaTd droxddupw pvornplov xpdvois secundum revelationem mysterit 
aiwvios ceovynuévou, temporibus aeternts tacitt, 

B. davepwlévros 5¢ viv 26. mantfestatt autem nunc 

C. (a) ded re ypadadv mpodytixadv [et] per Scripturam prophetarum, 

(4) wat’ émrayhy rot aiwvliov Geot secundum praeceptum aeterni Dei, 

(c) els dmaxony miorews tn obedttionem fides 


(@) eis mdvra ra €Ovn yreprobdvros ... in omnes gentes cogniti . . . 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 5 


The principal idea of the passage is evidently the descrip- 
tion of the three phases of the Mystery: formerly hidden in 
the depths of the divine counsels, but to-day disclosed 
providentially, and even made known to the whole world. 
This revelation of it is addressed, above all, to the Gentiles, 
whom it especially concerns; it has for its object to bring 
them to the faith by presenting to them the brilliant prospect 
of the blessings of the Gospel, which are destined for them 
as well as for others; it is done by means of the ancient 
prophecies now better understood; and this by the express 
command of the God the King of ages, to whom is to be 
ascribed all the glory of it, since he initiated it. Here St Paul 
identifies his Gospel with the message of Jesus Christ—that is 
to say, with the preaching which has Jesus Christ for its 
object, and he places it in connection with the mystery of the 
plans of redemption. The mystery itself, without being ex- 
pressly defined in this place, is described by its manifold char- 
acteristics which the Epistles of the captivity relate minutely. 
Hinted at by the prophets, but having remained uncompre- 
hended, it is now illumined by a new light and proclaimed to 
the Gentiles, whom it is to bring to the faith. All these traits 
combined show us that the mystery is the plan of salvation 
conceived by God from all eternity, hidden previously in the 
penumbra of the old revelation, but proclaimed to-day 
solemnly throughout the whole world—a plan by virtue of 
which all men are to be saved by the mediation of Christ and 





As the present Vulgate is almost unintelligible, especially on account of the 
parenthesis which breaks the connection of the parts, we give beside the text 
the ancient and much more exact Latin version, adding, however, an ef 
which the sense, in harmony with the original, demands. 

Note the gradation: A. Mystery formerly hidden (ypdvots aiwviois ceavyn- 
pévov), B. now made manifest (pavepwhévros Se viv), C. and even made known 
(yrwprobevtos ). 

Note also the four circumstances of its publication: (a) It is done by 
means of the ancient prophecies illumined by the Gospel (da re ypaddv 
arpogyntixa@v—the particle re, very important, is critically certain) ; (6) by order 
of God, whose secret it was (xar’ émirayny Tot alwviov Beod); (c) to the 
Gentiles specially interested (eis mavra ta €6vn); (¢) with the object of 
converting them (els taxon micrews). 

According to some, xara in both cases, although not connected, should be 
co-ordinated and depend equally on ornpifa: (God establishes you according 
to my Gospel, according to the mystery); the Gospel would thus be 
practically identified with the mystery, and the mystery would define the 
Gospel. According to others, in both cases xara is subordinate: the first 
limits ornpigat, as above; the second explains xipvyya (God confirms you 
according to (that is, in] my Gospel and the message of Jesus Christ, which is 
according to the mystery). In reality, the meaning is scarcely changed, for 
the best interpreters understand by 70 x7ypuvypya “Incot Xpiorod, not the 
message announced by Jesus Christ, but the message having Jesus Christ for 
its object. After this, the only question is to know whether the mystery is a 
second definition of the Gospel of Paul, or (which amounts to about the 
same thing) whether the message of Jesus Christ (that is to say, in fact, the 
Gospel of Paul) isin conformity with the mystery of the plan of redemption. 


6 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


by their mystical union with him. Now the purport of this 
mystery is the essential theme of the Pauline Gospel. 
The Epistles of the captivity will tell us how: 


I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and in my flesh fill up [gladly] 
those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, for his 
[mystical] body which is the Church. Whereof I am made a minister 
according to the dispensation of God, which is given me that I may 
proclaim to you fully the word of God: the mystery which hath been 
hidden from ages and [past] generations, but now is manifested to his 
saints, to whom God would make known how rich unto the Gentiles is 
the glory of this mystery, which is CArtst tn you, the hope of glory. 


The word Gospel is not used here; but, in reality, Paul 
means nothing else when he speaks of his preaching, of the 
charge which has been confided to him, of the mission which 
he is fulfilling, and of the sufferings which he is enduring 
and is ready still to face, in order worthily to accomplish his 
task. Now all this tends to the promulgation of the Mystery 
among the heathen. This mystery, formerly hidden in the 
arcana of divine knowledge, but now brought to light and 
loudly proclaimed, is Christ, accessible not only to the Jews, 
but to the Gentiles themselves, the universal Saviour of men 
and their common hope. No more exceptions, favours, 
privileges: henceforth Christ belongs to all, and in the 
same measure. This is what Paul feels himself called upon 
to preach incessantly, this is what makes him brave persecu- 


* Col. i, 24-27. For verse 24, see p. 295.—The phases of the mystery are 
here presented almost as in the preceding text; formerly kept seere?, it is now 
made manifest (ro pvoripiov Td anoKEeKpuppevoy amd TaV aidvwy Kal dno TeV 
yevedv, viv 5é efpavepwn, cf. Rom. xvi, 25-26: pvornpiou xpdvois aiwvtors 
ceovynuevov, pavepwhévros §€ viv) and is to be made known everywhere ° 
(yrwpioa, cf. Rom. xvi, 26: yrwptobévros). This is the special duty of Paul. 
The Apostle has received in view of the Gentiles (Col. i, 25 : eis yas, rf A Foy Oc 
€v tois €Ovecw) a ministry or an administration (olxovouia) which constitutes 
him didxovos ris éxxAnalas (i, 25) or oixovdpos eos (Tit. i, 7; 1 Cor. iv, 1), 
because the Church is the house (olxos) of God.—This ministry consists 
in eee tn tts integrity, in tts fulness (mAnpdoa) the word of 
God. The word of God is in general the Gospel (1 Cor. xiv, 36; 2 Cor. 
li, 17; iv, 2; 1 Thess. ii, 13), but two circumstances determine it here in a 
more special sense : the mission to the Gentiles and the identification of the 
word of God with the mystery. It is, therefore, practically the Gospel of 
Paul.—We have in this place a new and very concise definition of the mystery, 
i, 27: 6 €orw Xpiords ev dpiv y édmis ris Sdéns. Whether the antecedent 
of 6 éorw (var. 6s éorw, by attraction) is wAodros or pvoTHpiov matters 
little, for the mystery does not essentially differ from the riches of the 
mystery ; but it is grammatically and logically more probable that the 
antecedent is yvoryjpiov. It is this word, therefore, which is directly defined. 
—TIn the definition itself a comma can be put after év dyuiv and two distinct 
thoughts are obtained: the mystery is (1) Christ in the midst of you, Gentiles ; 
(2) Christ your hope. Or one can read the words without a comma and gain 
one single thought : the mystery is Christ, the hope of glory in you (or for 
you). Formerly Christ, the Messiah, seemed to belong to the Jews alone, 
and the Gentiles were without hope (Eph. ii, 12: xwpis Xpiorop .. . 
eAnida pr) éxovres). Now Christ is in the midst of them (é& vyuiv), he is 
theirs ; he is their hope; he promises and guarantees them celestial glory. 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 7 


tions, this is what consoles him for his sufferings: it is the 
proclamation of the great mystery, the Gospel of the un- 
circumcision. 

These same ideas are more fully developed in the great 
digression in the Epistle to the Ephesians : 


I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if yet you have 
heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me towards 
you, how that, according to revelation, the mystery has been made known 
to me, as I have written above in a few words; as you, reading, may 
understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other 
Se eirtarcan was not known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to 

is holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit ; that she Gentsles should be 
Jellow-hetrs and of the same body, and co-partners of his promise in 
Christ Jesus, by the Gospel, of which I am made a minister.... To 
me the least of all the saints is given this grace to preach among the Gentiles 
the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all men that they may see 
what is: the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from 
eternity in God who created all things. ... Wherefore I pray you 
not to faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory.} 


Four thoughts stand out in this passage. The Apostle, as 
is customary with him, calls himself the prisoner of Christ, 
the captive of the Gospel, for the sake of the Gentiles. It is 
for having pleaded their cause that he has drawn down upon 
himself the hate of his compatriots; it is for having defended 
their rights that he suffers persecution; therefore his suffer- 
ings are for him a source of joy, and ought to be a subject of 
pride for them.? He claims for himself, not an exclusive, but 
a very special knowledge of the Mystery, of which his Epistle 
contains the clearest and most complete exposition; above 
all, he claims to have the mandate to preach this article of 
faith everywhere; and the remembrance of such an un- 
deserved favour calls forth in him an outburst of humble 
gratitude. He identifies the mystery with the Gospel which 


1 Eph. iii, 1-13. The verses 2-13 form an immense parenthesis, and the 
thought of the phrase beginning at verse 1 (rovrov ydpw éyw IabAos) is 
carried on until verse 14 (rot¢‘rov ydpw xdurrw Ta ydvard pov). 

* Adopuos Xpiorob ’Inoot (Philem. 1 and 9), 6 Sdopuos rod xupiov (2 Tim. i, 8), 
é Sdopu0s rob Xpiorod ’Incob (Eph. iii, 1), 6 Sdopsos év Kupip (Eph. iv, 1).— 
Frequent allusions to his chains (Phil. ip 7/13; 4017 .COlaiv, 15 2 1 mii, 9; 
Philem. 10), which are the chains of the Gospel (Philem. 13: ev rots deopots rob 
evayyeXlov) because he has been imprisoned for having preached the rights of 
the Gentiles (Acts xxi, 28; xxii, 22); glorious chains for them (Eph. ili, 13: 
Hris éoriv 86€a dpudv) and honourable for him (Col. i, 24). He likes to call 
himself an ambassador of Christ in chains (Eph. vi, 20: vaép od mpeoBevw ev 
ddvoet), and his sole ambition is to preach see with the same courage the 
mystery of the Gospel (tbid.: ro vorhpiov trod evayyeMou) or the mystery of 
Christ for which he is bound (Col. iv, 3 : 7d pone hoe rob Xptorob 8° 6 Kal 
5é3eu01)—that is to say, the mystery which is the fundamental point of his 
Gospel and the mystery which has for its object Christ, the universal Redeemer. 

2 Eph. iii, 3-4: drt card dmoxddupw éyvwplon pot Td pvoripiov, xadws 
mpoéypaya ev dAlyw, mpds 6 Svvacbe dvaywwioKovres vofoat Thy avveoly pou 
év 7@ pvornplw rod Xpicrod. Paul explains what he has just said: efye 

xovcate Tiv olxovoulay ris xdpiros tof Geod rijs dofelons fea els duas. 
mi 


he word olxovoyla is not ta be taken in the active sense (administration), 


8 _ THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


he is commissioned to preach, not alone, but more than the 
others; a sublime ministry, having for its object to reveal to 
men the ineffable riches of the plans of redemption and to 
disclose to the angels themselves the depths of divine 
wisdom.! Finally, the mystery—and consequently the Gospel 
of Paul—is once more defined with more precision than ever : 
‘* The Gentiles are co-heirs ’’—that is to say, heirs of grace 
and glory with the same right and in the same measure as 
the Jews, to whom the patrimony of heavenly favours had 
until then seemed to be reserved; they are ‘‘ members of the 
same body,’’ the mystical body of Christ, and consequently 
between them and the Jews there are neither privileges, 
differences, nor inequalities; they are ‘‘ co-partners in the 


promise,’’ the wonderfully liberal promise made to the 


patriarchs down the centuries, and they are all this ‘‘ in 
Christ,’’ who is the meritorious cause of it and ‘‘ by the 
Gospel,’’ which is its essential condition.? 


but in the passive sense (establishment, divine institution) ; ydpis is not 
the grace of conversion but that of the apostolate, and in particular of the 
apostolate to the Gentiles, as is shown by the addition : rijs Sofelaons por eis 
tuds. The genitive ydpiros is therefore an objective genitive (the dis- 
pensation in relation to grace) or, if it be preferred, an epexegetical genitive 
(the dispensation which consists of grace). In verse 3, ért does not mean 
because, but that ts to say; the revelation ‘of the mystery (kava dmoxdAupw 
€yvwpicbn por To pvorhpiyv) is precisely the dispensation of grace of which 
he has just been speaking. When he adds, “as I wrote above in a few 
words ” (xa8ws mpo€ypaysa év oXAlyw), the Apostle refers to chap. ii, where he 
has indeed described the mystery of the incorporation of the Gentiles into 
the Church, with the assurance that his readers will recognize there how 
profound is his knowledge of this mystery. 

* Eph. ili, 8-9: €uoi 7 eAaxtororépw mavraw ayiwv €560n 4 xdpis avrn, 
rois €veow evayyeAcacbat 76 dvettyviaerov mobros tod Xpiorod, Kal Pwricat 
tis 4 oixovouia tod pvornpiov. The word éAayiorérepos is curious: “ lesser 
than the least of the saints.’’ It is a comparative of a superlative. These 
formations are not rare, especially in low Greek, with irregular super- 
latives and comparatives. We find in Aristotle ésyardrepos and in St John 
pelorepos (3 John 4).—The grace, the signal hgnour accorded to Paul, 
in spite of his unworthiness, is: (1) to preach to the Gentiles the unsearch- 
able riches of Christ; (2) to explain the dispensation of the great 
mystery. The first message especially concerns the Gentiles because it is 
important for them to know that the riches of Christ are poured out upon 
them abundantly, and that they by this fact are as rich as their elders the Jews. 
These riches of Christ are called unsearchable, incomprehensible or im- 
measurable, because they surpass human standards of value and because 
they can be extended to all men without being exhausted. The second 
message is addressed to all, Jews as well as Gentiles, for all need to know the 
dispensation of the mystery, a dispensation comprising, as its name indicates, 
a mass of institutions, relations and points of view which until then had 
remained the secret of the Creator (sacramenti absconditi a saeculis: 1% Deo 
gut omnta creavit), of which the angels themselves had no knowledge (ut 
innotescat principatibus et potestatibus in caelestibus) and in which the 
manifold wisdom of God bursts forth (3 woAvoixiros codia). 

* # Eph. ili, 6: elvat 7a €6vn ovyxdAnpovdua Kal ovoowua Kal ovpyéroya ris 
éenayyehias ev Xpiora "Incod 8a rot edayyeAlov. Here are the contents 
and the definition of the mystery. The principal idea is in the component 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 9 


Our investigations bring us always to the same result. 
The Gospel of Paul, or, in other words, the mystery of God, 
the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the Gospel, or simply 
the mystery, is, in its broadest and most precise expression, 
the mystery of the redemption of all men by Christ and in 
Christ. Here and there the Epistles furnish us with a few 
more data on this subject, but we must be on our guard 
against the danger of supposing that the Apostle intends to 
call our attention to a characteristic point of his teaching 
every time he appeals to his Gospel. When, provoked by the 
disorderly conduct of the Corinthians in the celebration of 
the agape, he reminds them of the teaching of the Saviour on 
the subject of the Eucharist, he does not suggest that the 
other churches are less favoured in this respect ;+ and when, 
in reply to their new-born doubts, he repeats a portion of 
his first instruction about the death, burial, and resurrection 
of Christ, he claims so little distinction for himself in 
this from the other apostles, that he immediately adds: 
‘‘ Whether I or they, so we preach, and so you have be- 
lieved.’’2, No doubt he must have insisted more than the 
others did on the soteriological importance of the burial and 
resurrection of Christ, but the proof that this point of view is 
not exclusively his, is that he supposes the symbolism of the 
mystical burial of the Christian in baptism to be already 
known to the Romans and Colossians,* who were not his 
disciples. 

However, the mention of his Gospel, even when it does not 
necessarily imply a characteristic point of his preaching, at 


ee nn nnn Ean 


proposition ovv found in the three adjectives: ovyKAnpovopua, co-hetrs—that is, 
heirs w7th (the Jews, etc.).—The word ovAxAnpovoyos is not employed by 
classic writers ; it has been found in Philo, Legat. ad Catum, 10 ; the verb 
avyKAnpovopeiv is in Eccli. xxii, 29. In the New Testament erztage 
(xAnpovouia), being in general eternal life (Eph. i, 14, 18; v, 5 ; Col. ili, 24; 
1 Pet. i, 4), ovyxAnpovduos signifies co-heir of the kingdom of heaven. Cf. 
Rom. viii, 17; Heb. xi, 9; 1 Pet. iii, 7—The meaning of ovoowpa, members 
of the same body, is clear to anyone familiar with the theory of the mystical 
body. Did Paul himself invent this expressive term ? What would lead 
us to think that it is older is that in the De Mundo (iv, 30), attributed to 
Aristotle, we find cvcowpatorotetv.—The word ovppéroyos is not found else- 
where than in Josephus; but ovpperéyew is employed in the classics, and 
the addition of tis érayyeAlas makes the meaning entirely clear. Paul fre- 
quently explains what he means by the promise or the promises (Rom. iv, 13- 
20 ; ix, 4, 8, 9; xv, 8; Gal. iii, 14-29; iv, 23-28; Epbaisi3clgiz.etc) 
they are the engagements which God, on various solemn occasions, con- 
tracted with his people, and they include the sending of the Messiah.— 
The two conditions for receiving these blessings are to embrace the Gospel, 
which is for every believer the means of salvation (Rom. i, 16), and to be 
united to Christ the only Mediator (1 Tim. ii, 5), the depositary of all these 
gifts (Gal. iii, 16), and above all the crucible in which the intimate union of 
believers is effected (Gal. iii, 26-29). 
1 1 Cor. xi, 28. Ser OF XV ePh c 
Rom. vi, 4 ; Col. ii, 12. 


LO THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


least gives the reader a hint. Before the text: ‘‘ In the day 
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, 
according to my Gospel,’’! the best exegetes ask themselves 
what is the point aimed at by those words, ‘‘ according to 
my Gospel ’’; and they rightly conclude that it is neither the 
day of the Lord, nor the secret actions of men as matter for 
the divine judgement, nor the fact of judgement itself, but 
the way in which the judgement is to be delivered through 
the mediation of Christ. This is, in fact, one of Paul’s 
favourite ideas. To the impudent detractors who accuse 
him of adulterating the word of God, of concealing it under 
miserable disguises, and of overloading it with arbitrary 
enigmas, he protests that he does not preach himself, but 
“‘Christ Jesus our Lord.’ He puts the emphasis on 
the word Lord. We know, indeed, that he considered 
the confession of the lordship of Christ as a condensed pro- 
fession of faith and as a résumé of the Gospel.? So, also, 
when he mentions his Gospel in reference to the Mosaic 
Law and sets it over against that of the Judaizers,* he 
makes us think of his principle doctrine concerning the nature 
of the Law, which is powerless in itself, independent of 
grace, and is good only for keeping’ rebels and criminals 
in the right path by means of terror and threatenings. In his 
second Epistle to Timothy he reminds him of still another 
point of his Gospel: ‘‘ Be mindful that the Lord Jesus Christ 
of the seed of David, is risen again from the dead, according 
to my Gospel, wherein I labour even unto bonds, as an evil- 
doer.’’® The point aimed at is evidently not the descent from 
David; it is, therefore, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the 
remembrance of which is a comfort and encouragement to the 
Christian in the midst of disappointments and persecutions. 

All these details scattered here and there warn us not to 
confine the Gospel of Paul in a too narrow formula, such as 
the liberty of the Gentiles in regard to the observances of the 
Law would be, or justification by faith without the works of 
the Law, or even the universality of God’s plans of redemp- 
tion. Paul’s Gospel is not so much a particular thesis, as it 
is the whole body of Gospel teaching, regarded from a certain 


? Rom. ii, 16: Indtcaré hac locutione aliquid videtur, quod ab ipso magts, 
quam. a reliquis, doceatur ipstusque praedicationt guast sit proprium et 
essentiale (Cornely). “‘ The point to which St Paul’s Gospel or habitual 
teaching bears witness is, not that God will judge the world (which was an 
a doctrine), but that he will judge it through Jesus Christ, as his Deputy ” 
(Sanday). 

a 2) COTsiy an: * Rom. x, 9-10. ‘ 1 Tim. i, 8-11. 

5 2 Tim. ii, 8. ‘‘ The emphasis of the thought is in the words ‘ risen again 
from the dead.’ That is what Timothy must above all remember ”’ (Le- 
monnyer). The Apostle exhorts his disciple to suffer with him (ii, 3: 
ovyxaxondOnaov) for the sake of the Gospel (i, 8), thinking of Jesus risen from 
the dead, who, being a man like pareve passed through the same trials 

before entering into glory. 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM II 


angle and presented in a special light. It is a frame in 
which all the truths can find a place. Therefore, after having 
considered the indications given us by the Apostle, it is well 
to proceed to summarize his doctrine by way of counter- 
proof. 


3. Let us then close his Epistles, as if he had said nothing 
of his Gospel, and let us ask the theologians best versed 
in his doctrine, without distinction in regard to schools or 
tendencies, what its essential points and constituent elements 
are. We have not again to group and classify them, but 
merely to draw up a list of them. Later on we shall examine 
whether they are really fundamental and cannot be ignored 
without altering the whole order of things, whether they are 
characteristic, at least when viewed from the Apostle’s angle ; 
and whether they are susceptible of forming a coherent whole. 
Here, then, first, is the verdict of this referendum, in which 
the enumeration of the points follows without logical order : 

God’s plan of redemption, comprising the divine initia- 
tive of grace, eternal election and predestination in Christ, 
providential preparations and the completion of the redemp- 
tive work. 

The contrast of the two Adams, the type and the antitype, 
summing up the history of humanity: the first Adam the 
cause of sin, death, and the fall; the second Adam the author 
of justice, life, and restoration. 

The antithesis of flesh and spirit, placed erroneously by 
some at the very foundation of Paulinism, but certainly of 
capital importance for the doctrines of salvation and of 
morals. 

The part played by the Law and its scope, which, at first 
sight, would seem to be less closely allied to the Apostle’s 
teaching, but the import of which cannot be called secondary 
in the Gospel of the teacher of the Gentiles. 

The redeeming death of Christ, regarded by some with 
evident exaggeration as an exclusive creation of the mind of 
Paul, but which is certainly a central point of his doctrine. 

Justification by faith, the counterpart of redemption and 
the subjective application of the redeeming death. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, as the intrinsic comple- 
ment of the redemptive work, and as the exemplary cause of 
our own glorious resurrection. 

The Church the mystical body of Christ, fruit of his death 
and of his resurrection. 

Baptism, the seal of faith and rite of incorporation into the 
mystical Christ, with the Eucharist, which gives to this body 
its nourishment and growth. 

Eschatology, as the normal issue of the Christian life. 

This list could no doubt be extended to include a few more 


12 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


points; but in most cases they might be included in one of 
the subjects already mentioned, or else they possess nothing 
really characteristic or seem to be at the periphery of Pauline 
thought. Thus the apocalyptic element, in so far as it is 
distinct from the eschatology, is wanting in originality, and 
follows the traditional data; the demonology and angelology 
are superficial ideas borrowed from popular language, and 
without serious influence on the very foundation of the teach- 
ing; the theory of the origin, extent and dominion of sin 1S, 
on the contrary, of capital importance, but in the antithesis 
of the two Adams it holds the position of a part to the 
whole; finally, the theodicy, in so far as it is specifically 
Pauline, is entirely contained in the theory of the plans of 
redemption. 

This doctrinal summary, which constitutes the particular 
teaching of the Doctor of the Gentiles, is what is called 
Paulinism, and can be also called by a name which is perhaps 
open to discussion, but is accepted now and sanctioned by 
use, the Theology of St Paul. Before going further, how- 
ever, let ys dispel a misunderstanding or ambiguity. We 
do not treat the sacred authors ‘‘ as theologians,’’ nor do 
we consider their writings ‘‘ as so many theological schemes, 
or even sketches’’; we do not look upon them. “now 
as revelation and now as theology,’’ and we do not dis- 
tinguish in them ‘‘on the one hand revealed data, and on 
the other, the elaboration’’ of divine data. The theology 
of St Paul is one thing, the theology of St Thomas, for 
example, is quite another. The theology of St Paul is the 
sum total of the divine revelations transmitted to us through 
the agency of the Doctor of the Gentiles. The theology 
of St Thomas is his—however felicitous, nevertheless human 
and fallible—interpretation of the data revealed by Paul 
and by the other inspired writers. Paul gives us the 
elements of a theology, but he does not construct his theology 
himself in the usual sense of that word. He. thinks 
systematically—that is to say, in a consistent and coherent 
manner, but the. system itself is not his, and in order to re- 
duce his thought to a system, it will be sometimes needful to 
fill up the gaps, establish connections, and draw some conclu- 
sions. This is the task of the theologian. As a faithful and 
loyal interpreter, he must aim at rendering with as little im- 
perfection as possible the entire thought, and nothing but the 
thought, of his inspired guide, without perverting it, without 
influencing it, and without misrepresenting it either by excess 
or by default. We are not of those who wish to read in St 
Paul ‘‘ more than he says and more than he can say’’; who 
regard him as a simple ‘collaborator of grace and of the 
master within ’’; and who, on the pretext that “the letter 
killeth,’’ refuse to be bound to his words and expressions. 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 13 


These precise statements are necessary ; for, although they 
do not seem to exceed the limits of an average intelligence, 
they often actually escape the notice of many cultivated 
minds. 


@ 
II—PAULINE THEOLOGY IN EMBRYO 


1. Christ the Centre. 2. Notas Dying. 3. But as the Saviour. 
4. Synoptical View. 

1. If, in order to understand St Augustine’s City of God 
or Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History, it is necessary 
to be thoroughly imbued with the thesis which these two 
great geniuses develop therein with such magnificence of 
style, it is no less needful, in order to read St Paul profit- 
ably, to examine attentively the governing principles of his 
thought. In works of the intellect, as in the creations of art 
or the spectacles of nature, there is always a point beyond 
which the proportions are disturbed and the perspective is 
perverted. This central point which gives unity, cohesion, 
and harmony to the whole and cannot be displaced without 
disturbing the entire arrangement of the work, is what is 
called the dominant idea. A thinker of the first rank, a 
powerfu! dialectician, and a philosophic mind capable of co- 
ordinating dissimilar facts, grasping their hidden relations 
and unifying them by vigorous synthesis, Paul had to put 
into his writings a small number of dominant ideas, or 
perhaps only one; and it is beyond all doubt that this idea, 
once known, is the leading thread of his doctrine. : 
‘The first bird’s-eye view of this immense field is enough to © 
convince us that its centre is Christ. Everything converges 
on this point; thence everything proceeds, and thither every- 
thing returns. Christ is the beginning, middle, and end of 
everything. In the natural order, as in the supernatural, 
everything is in him, everything is by him, everything is for 
him.) A simple calculation confirms this impression. With_. 
the exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the name 
‘*Lord’’ occurs about 280 times in the writings of Paul; the 
name ‘‘ Jesus,’’ 220; the name ‘‘ Christ,’’ nearly 400 times. 
If he writes one of the Saviour’s names in nearly every line 
of his Epistles, it is because he makes this the mark of all 
his thoughts and prayers. If we open his Epistles at random, 
we come infallibly on an allusion to the nature, the work, or 
the mediaton of the man-God.! , Every attempt to under- 


1 The name Christ (Xpiorés, with or without the article) appears alone 
203 times ; Christ Jesus 92 times ; Jesus Christ 84 times ; the Lord (Kupwos, with 
or without the article) appears alone 157 times; the Lord Jesus 24 times ; 
the Lord Jesus Christ 64 times ; Jesus alone is found only 16 times. Attention 
should be also paid to the other names, such as Saviour, Son of God, Well- 
beloved, etc., as well as to numerous phrases in which Jesus Christ, without 
being named, is the subject of the proposition. The figures given above are 


14 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


stand any passage whatever, if we should eliminate the person 
of Jesus Christ, would end in certain failure. 

This is forgotten by those theologians who make the 
foundation of the doctrine of Paul either the metaphysical 
notion of God, or the abstract thesis of justification by faith, 
or the psychological contrast between flesh and spirit. 

The first are victims of an optical illusion. Jewish thought 
being profoundly religious, the idea of God fills the entire 
Bible. For St Paul, as for all his compatriots, God is the 
primary source of all, the universal providence, the supreme 
end of all beings; nothing is done without his initiative, 
nothing occurs except through him. From this point of 
view the theodicy of St Paul differs little from that of Isaias 
or St John; it is a heritage of the ancient revelation and the 
common patrimony of the Israelites. Now, it is not in points 
of agreement, but in divergences, that we must seek. the in- 
most thought of an author and the root-idea of a work. 

Justification by faith must be set aside for another reason. 
It is a theme of controversy which owes its prominence to 
judaizing polemics. Once the controversy is ended, Paul 
seems to forget it or to lose his interest in it; a sure proof 
that it does not form part of the very foundation of his 
theology, at least in the acute form which the struggle 
against irreconcilable adversaries gives it. Luther never saw 
this when he made this doctrine the quintessence of the 
Gospel and the palladium of Protestantism. 

Will the psychological dualism put forward by some 
rationalistic writers of our day give us any better key to 
the theology of St Paul? Impotence of man before the good 
which he loves, domination of sin which the Law incites 
rather than restrains, instinctive desire for a justice which 
proceeds from faith alone, and which individual failures 
cannot impede, and an inward feeling that Christ is sufficient 
to fulfil all the aspirations of our soul: such are the funda- 
mental principles of this Gospel. In this manner, they say, 
the theology of St Paul is the mature fruit of his religious 
experience ; he is indebted to no one for it; he owes it only 
to himself or, to use his own words, to the spirit of Christ ; 
Sa a nn nk at ee nh SI lee a he ote eh en en 
only approximate, because certain passages offer different readings (/esus 
Christ and Christ Jesus, for example, often being interchanged) ; but the 
sum total remains about the same. 

* Findlay (in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. iii, p. 718) takes the 
theodicy as a point of departure : ‘‘ The Apostle’s doctrine is theocentric, not 
in reality anthropocentric.... St Paul’s Soteriology and Christology are 
rooted in his Theology.” He attributes the same line to Stevens. In fact, 
the latter (The Pauline Theology®, New York, 1906, p. 96), after the pre- 
liminaries, begins with the Pauline conception of God, which is, he says, of 
capital importance for understanding the theology of the great Apostle. 
This exceptional importance of the idea of God does not appear in Stevens, 
The Theology of the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1899. 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 15 


in his way of thinking, after as well as before his conversion, 
unity and continuity are always present; everything can be 
explained without the annoying intervention ‘of the super- 
natural. But we have seen, on the contrary, that this 
explains nothing, neither his conversion nor the rest of his 
life. Is it likely that Paul, who regarded human wisdom with 
pity and disdain, would reduce his Gospel to a philosophical 
hypothesis? Could he have expressed his dominant idea in 
one single passage, the meaning of which is disputed?! No, 
neither man nor God forms the centre of Paul’s theology, but 
Christ. Paul’s doctrine is not a corollary of his anthropology 
or of his theodicy; it has its focus in the one and only media- 
tor between God and men. 


2. As the mediation of Christ consists only in his work as 
Redeemer, and as he is the Redeemer only by the cross, many 
theologians, even those who occasionally favour another 
system, see in the verbum cructs the corner-stone of Paul’s 
Gospel: ‘‘ The fact of the death of Jesus becomes thus the 
centre of the whole Pauline system. The Christianity of the 
Apostle is summed up in the person of Christ ; but this person 
himself acquires all his redemptive importance only at the 
moment of his death on the cross.’’? The idea is all the more 
alluring because the formal declaration of Paul puts us on 
the track of it: ‘‘O foolish Galatians,’’ he writes to some 
wavering converts, ‘‘ who hath fascinated you... before 
whose eyes Christ hath been set forth crucified among you cae 
He had exposed to view, placarded, before the eyes of the 
Galatians the image of the Crucified; he had made of Jesus 


1 Chap. vii of the Epistle to the Romans. See Vol. I, pp. 225-236. 
* Sabatier, L’ Apdire aE: 322. See also Beyschlag. 
a 


3 Gal. iii, 1: "82 avdnrot IaAara, O insensati Galatae, quis vos fasct- 
ris Spas €Bdoxavev, ols kar’ dpBaryods navit non obedire veritatt ante 
"I. X. mpoeypadn eoravpwpévos ; quorum oculos J. C. praescriptus 


est, in volts cructfixus ? 


The addition (non obedire veritatt) in the Vulgate is merely an unimportant 
gloss, but the words #% vodis, before crucifixus and after the comma, render 
the meaning difficult. If, with a certain number of manuscripts, we 
read in Greek év dyuiv, it is clearly necessary to make these words refer to 
mpoeypddn.—In place of praescriptus, it should be proscriptus, as the 
Fuldensis has it. Proscribere, mpoypddew, means to expose to view, to 
placard publicly, for example, a capital sentence; hence the edicts of 
proscription and the proscribed. St Paul had, in a way, exposed and 
placarded before the Galatians the image of Jesus crucified, in order that 
this image, always present to their view, might preserve them from seduction. 
—Fascinare, Baoxalvew, means to fascinate by the look, as the serpent 
fascinates the little bird, or the cat the mouse. In order for the charm to be 
effective, the gaze of the fascinator must remain fixed upon the creature 
fascinated. If one or the other turns away his eyes, the charm is broken and 
the fascination ceases. The Galatians have only been bewitched by the 
seducers, because they have not, as they should have done, kept their gaze 
fixed on the Crucified. 


16 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


on the cross a picture so vivid and so poignant, that he 
cannot conceive how they have been able to divert their gaze 
from it: if they would keep their eyes fixed upon his blood- 
stained image, the charm of the seducer would have no hold 
upon them. It is certain that the preaching of the cross 
always assumed in his first instructions great prominence: 
** I determined to know among you only Jesus Christ and 
him crucified.’’ Jesus Christ is the general theme of his 
preaching ; Jesus Christ crucified his special subject. If he 
always puts at the foundation of his preaching the mystery 
of the cross, does he not give us a right to seek there the 
substance of his Gospel and the root idea of his theology? — 

These reasons are.more specious than solid. In order that 
Jesus Christ should save us by the cross, it was necessary 
that the drama of redemption should be enacted at a certain 
place and time, at the moment when the Jews had lost their 
autonomy and the right of the sword, under the Roman 
domination, which reserved this infamous punishment of 
crucifixion for conquered peoples. Now, although nothing 
takes place by chance in the designs of God, is it likely that 
St Paul should attach his principal theory of the salvation of 
men to an accidental circumstance of place and time? The 
Apostle, it is said, determined not to know anything except 
Jesus Christ crucified. That is indeed what he affirms, but he 
joins to it two limitations. One is contained in the words 
*“among you,’’ and refers to the special conditions of his 
apostolate at Corinth. After the rebuff he had met with at 
Athens, he had understood that to the cavilling, frivolous 
Greeks it was necessary to present the mystery of the cross 
in all its disconcerting realism; perhaps, under different 
surroundings, he would have tried another method. The 
second limitation springs from his controversial purpose: he 
is reproached with being ignorant of, or at least neglecting, 
wisdom; he replies that his wisdom, the only profitable 
wisdom which they are capable of apprehending, is the 
cross, a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the 
Gentiles. The paradox consists in opposing the foolishness 
of the cross to the wisdom of the world, and in showing that 
God triumphs over wisdom by foolishness; but the Apostle 


* 1 Cor. ii, 2: Od ydp Expwd te elddvar ev tyiv ef yu) “Inooty Xpiordv 
Kal rotrov éoravpwuévov. Here the word xpivew, judicare, means “ to 
judge good, to find proper,” a meaning frequent in St Paul (1 Cor. vii, 37 ; 
2 Cor. ii, 1) and elsewhere, as in the Ciceronian expression: Athi judicatum 
est. Itis a question of a practical, not of a speculative, judgement. Wemust 
not translate, therefore, “ I judged that I did not know anything except Jesus 
Christ crucified,” for this judgement would be contrary to the truth, but: 
“I did not judge it proper to know anything whatsoever, save Jesus Christ 
crucified.” The negation is naturally related to the nearest word éxpwa. 
To make the ov refer either to 7s or eiSévat would be arbitrary, without, 
moreover, especially modifying the sense. 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 17 


does not give us the right to conclude in addition that the 
verbum cructs contains in embryo all his teaching. 

To tell the truth, the death of Christ, considered in itself, 
independently of what gives it signification and value, would 
be without any effect on our salvation. By itself, far from 
being the instrument of redemption, it would be the supreme 
crime of humanity, which would seem to require a new re- 
_demption. “It is meritorious for Christ and salutary for us 
only so far as it is on the part of the Son an act of reparation 
and the crowning act of a life of obedience. In order to confer 
upon Jesus’ death a redeeming value, it is necessary to include 
in it an element which puts it in relation with God, with men, 
and with the Saviour himself : with the Saviour who offers it, 
with God who accepts it, and with men who benefit from it. 
On this condition only is it agreeable to God, whom it renders 
propitious to us. 

A more serious reason for not limiting our attention to the 
death of Christ in order to find in it the primitive idea of 
Pauline theology, is that in the eyes of Paul Christ’s death 
is inseparable from his resurrection, without which, from a 
sotericlogical point of view, it is incomplete. When the 
Apostle epitomized his Gospel for the converts of Corinth, 
he said to them: ‘‘I delivered unto you first of all which I 
also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according 
to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose 
again the third day, according to the Scriptures.’ This is 
what he taught at Antioch in Pisidia, at Athens, everywhere.’ 
The death of Christ was never preached without the resurrec- 
tion, for the one is the complement and corollary of the 
other. Not only was the glorious resurrection due to the 
Saviour as a recompense, but God owed it to himself to raise 
his Son from the dead, in order to seal his mission and to 
sanction his work. Since the death of Jesus was not the 
settlement of a personal debt, it has not its finality in itself ; 
‘Whom God hath raised up, as it was impossible that he 
should be holden by it’’ (death).* So, not content with 
affirming that Christ ‘‘ died and has risen again for us,’’ St 
Paul is not afraid to write the following words, whose 
natural meaning gives so much trouble to certain exegetes : 
‘‘ He was delivered up for our sins and rose again for our 
justification.’’* Whence it appears that the resurrection of 
Christ forms an integral part of the redemptive work. 


3. However, the complex idea ‘‘ Jesus dead and risen for 
us’’ is not yet the expression for which we are seeking. In 
addition to the fact that it is not sufficiently peculiar to Paul, 
it expresses only the objective side of our salvation. Now, 

1 Cor.xv; 324; 2 Acts xiii, 29-30 ; xvii, 31 ; xxvi, 23, etc. 

® Acts ii, 24. * Rom. iv, 25. 

II. 2 


18 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


the Apostle never separates the two aspects of redemption. 
It is useless to ransack all his Epistles; it is sufficient to 
observe that if Jesus Christ dies for us, it is to make us die 
mystically with him, and that, if he rises again for us, it is 
to make us rise morally with him. Si unus pro omnibus 
mortuus est, ergo omnes mortut sunt. It matters not 
whether this idea is presented under the form of a condi- 
tional proposition, with the Greek received text and the 
Vulgate, or under the form of an enthymeme, in accordance 
with the critical editions; for in both ways our mystical 
death appears equally as the necessary consequence of 
Christ’s death. Much more: ‘‘ If we be dead with Christ, 
we believe that we live also together with him.’’? Our resur- 
rection is involved in the Saviour’s, as is our death in his 
death. 

In the writings of St Paul there is a long series of unusual 
words, most of which can be translated into another language 
only by an uncouth expression, or by a circumlocution. The 
Apostle has invented them or revived them, in order to give 
a graphic expression to the ineffable union of Christians with 
Christ and in Christ. Such are: to suffer with Jesus Christ, 
to be crucified with him, to die with him, to be buried with 
him, to rise from the dead with him, to live with him, to be 
made alive with him, to share his form, to share hts glory, to 
sit with him, to reign with him, to be conformed with him, 
united with his life, co-hetr. To these can be added co- 
partner, concorporate, built together with and still others, 
which do not directly express the union of Christians with 
Christ, but designate the intimate union of Christians with 
one another in Christ. An examination of these curious 

BROUCOLAU ars: * Rom. vi, 8. 

® Here are the above-mentioned words with the Vulgate translation and 
an indication of all the places where they occur : 

(2) ocvpmdcyew (compatt, Rom. viii, 17 ; 1 Cor. xii, 26). 

(6) ovoravpotoba: (simul cructfigs, Rom. vi, 6; conjfigé cruct, Gal. ii, 20). 

(c) ovwanobvicxew (commort, 2 Tim. ii, 11 ; ¢f. 2 Cor. vii, 3). 

(2) cvvOdrrecba (consepelirt, Rom. vi, 4; Col. ii, 12). : 

(e) ovveyeipew (conresuscitare, Eph. ii, 6; passive, Col. ii, 12 and iii, 1). 

(f) ovliv or oul iv (simul vivere cum, Rom vi, 8 ; convivere, 2 Tim. ii, 11). 

(gz) ovlworoiv (convivificare, Eph. ii, § ; Col. ii, 13). 

(2) ovppopdilecBat (configuraré, Phil. iii, 10). 

t) ovvdokalecbat (conglorificart, Rom. viii, 17). 

J) ovyxabilew (consedere facere, Eph. ii, 6). 

(2) ovpBaorevew (conregnare, 2 Tim. ii, 12; cf. 1 Cor. iv, 8). 

(7) ovppopdos (conformis, Rom. viii, 20 ; Phil. iii, 21). 

(m) ovpdutos (complantatus, Rom. vi, 5). 

(mn) ovyxAnpovdépos (coheres, Rom. viii, 17 ; Eph. iii, 6). 

(0) ouppéToxos (comparticeps, Eph. iii, 6; v, 7). 

(~) ovoowpos (concorporalis, Eph. iii, 6). 

(7) ovvoixodopeiobas (coasdificars, Eph. ii, 22). 

(r) ovvappodroyotpevos (constructus, Eph. ii, 21; compactus, Eph. iv, 16). 
A Z oe es (connexus, Eph. iv, 16; comstructus, Col. ii, 19; 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 19 


words suggests to us three interesting observations: our 
mystical union with Christ does not extend to the mortal life 
of Jesus; it originates only at the time of the Passion, when 
Jesus Christ inaugurates his redemptive work; but, from 
that moment on, it is continuous, and the communicatio 
tdiomatum between Christians and Christ is henceforth 
complete.—That if we go back to the source of thiS union of 
identity, we see that it exists by right and potentially at the 
moment when the Saviour, acting in the name and for the 
profit of guilty humanity, dies for us, and causes us to die 
with him, but that it is realized, in fact and indeed, in every 
one of us, when faith and baptism graft us upon the dying 
Christ and make us participate in his death.—The author of 
it is none other than God himself, who, clothing us with 
the form and attributes of his well-beloved’ Son, recognizes 
us as his children by adoption, and treats us thereafter as co- 
heirs with Jesus. 

We come back thus to what is perhaps most personal 
and characteristic in St Paul’s theology : I mean the expres- 
sion In Christo Jesu, which comprises the whole of redemp- 
tion from its first conception in the divine mind and its 
potential execution on Calvary, to its successive realization 
in each one of us, and its final consummation in eternity. 
God has elected and predestined us in Christ; in Christ he 
reconciled the world unto himself; in Christ we are born to 
grace; in Christ we grow and persevere in grace; in Christ 
we shall be made alive, raised from the dead, and glorified. 
But is not this precisely the object of the mystery, which is, 
as we have seen, the corner-stone of Paul’s Gospel? Be- 
tween the communicatio idiomatum pointed out above, the 


All the words above enumerated are Pauline but (4), (¢), (7) and (); yet 
they are all without exception Pauline in sense. Indeed, ovoravpoicGa: is 
employed by the evangelists only in the literal meaning, speaking of the 
thieves cructfied with Jesus (Matt. xxvii, 44; Mark xv, 32; John xix, 32)3 
ovvarobvicxew, also in the literal meaning, referring to Peter who wishes 
to dite with Jesus (Mark xiv, 31); ovyxabilew also, in reference to the 

eople seated wtth Peter (Luke xxii, 55). Only ouvyxAnpovduos comes a 
Fittle nearer to the usage of Paul in Heb. xi, 9 (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
co-hesrs of the promise), and in 1 Pet. iii, 7 (husbands and wives co-heirs 


of grace). 

Gaiteia large number of other words, also Pauline for the most part, do 
not figure in this list because, although they well express the union of the 
faithful with one another through the communion of saints, they do not 
explicitly declare their union with Christ or in Christ. These are: 
ouvaywvitecbar (Rom. xv, 30); ovvabdetvy (collaborare, Phil. i, 27; iv, 3); 
ouvurroupyetv (2 Cor. i, 11); ovyxaxomabety (2 Tim. i, 8 ; ii, 3) ; cvyxowwvetv 
(Eph. v, 11; Phil. iv, 14; Apoc. xviii, 4) ; ovyxowwvds (Rom. xi, 17 ; 1 Cor. 
ix, 23; Phil. i, 7; Apoe. i, 9); ovpmodirns (Eph. ii, 9); cupptynris 
(Phil. iii, 17), etc. 

One should bear in mind that the idea expressed by these composite verbs 
is often translated by the simple verb with the component preposition separ- 
ated from it (for example, Rom. vi, 8: ef dwePdvopev odv Xptord). 


20 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


phrase In Christo Jesu and the contents of the mystery, 
exist the closest and most enduring relations. They are 
not so much three distinct truths as three particular aspects 
of the same truth, redemption by Christ and in Christ: only 
the mystery looks upon it from the standpoint of God, who 
takes the initiative in it and keeps its secret ; the communica- 
tio 1diomatum considers it from the standpoint of man who 
appropriates to himself its benefits and gathers its fruits; 
the phrase In Christo Jesu apprehends it in the very person 
of the mediator. In any case, the theology of St Paul is 
soteriological. 

But how can we give it an expression comprehensive 
enough to keep us from omitting anything essential and 
short enough to avoid every useless additional burden? 
Perhaps the following statement, despite its imperfection, 
would be sufficiently explicit, provided the value of the words 
be precisely noted: ‘‘ Christ as Saviour associating every 
believer with his death and life.’’ Christ as Saviour defines 
the person of the redeemer ; he is the Messiah, the messenger, 
the agent and the representative of God, the high priest of 
guilty humanity, the new Adam charged by God with the 
task of repairing the work of the first Adam.—Every believer 
specifies the subject of redemption, potentially universal, 
without distinctions, exclusions, or privileges; and indicates 
at the same time the essential condition of salvation, faith. 
Union with the death and life of Christ comprises the re- 
demptive plan, conceived by the Father from eternity, ful- 
filled in the course of the ages by the Son, who, making him- 
self one with us, and uniting us to him by a bond of mystical 
identity, makes what is ours pass to him, and what is his 
Own pass to us. 


4. If we have succeeded in indicating the true central point 
of the Pauline doctrine, it seems necessary to place ourselves 
on Calvary, as on a lofty observatory, and there to con- 
template, first, the mystery of our salvation under all its 
aspects: the mission of the Saviour, the efficacy of the re- 
deeming death, and the immediate effects of redemption; 
then, to fix our gaze upon the events which serve as a pre- 
lude to the great drama and also on the series of facts which 
prepare its denouement. But this mode of procedure, how- 
ever rational it may appear, is impracticable. The work of 
redemption, conditioned by the history of the fall, is explained 
only by the light of the divine counsels, and is understood 
only in the work of the person of the Redeemer. It is, there- 
fore, necessary to examine, first of all, what led up to it— 
that is to say, the state of fallen humanity and the designs 
of God concerning it; then, the origin, relations and nature 
of him who assumes the task of saving the world. Similarly, 


DEFINITION OF PAULINISM 21 


the consequences of redemption comprise two distinct orders 
of benefits which we ought not to blend in one: I mean the 
channels established by God to convey to men’s souls the 
efficacy of the redeeming blood, and the fruits of salvation 
which this divine nourishment causes to germinate. Thus, if 
we eliminate the subdivisions which the nature of the subject 
imposes or suggests, the theology of St Paul assumes the 
following schematic form: 


I.—Preparation for the Redemption. 


1. Humanity without Christ. 
2. The Initiative of the Father. 


II.—The Person of the Redeemer. 


1. The Pre-existent Christ. 
2. Relations of the Pre-existent Christ. 
3- Jesus Christ. 


Iil.—The Work of Redemption. 


1. The redeeming Mission. 
2. The redeeming Death. 
3. The immediate effects of the Redemption. 


1V.—The Channels of Redemption. 


1. Faith and Justification. 
2. The Sacraments. 
3. The Church. 


V.—The fruits of the Redemption. 


1. The Christian Life. 
2. The Last Ends. 


Instead of appearing at the head of this list, as one might 
have expected, the central idea occupies really its centre. By 
degrees we rise to the summit of the doctrinal teaching of the 
Apostle, and then descend from it. The scheme of redemp- 
tion thus unrolls both behind and before us in a chronological 
picture of harmoniously receding vistas. 


CHAPTER II 
THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 


I—-PAUL AND JESUS 


1. Paul against Jesus. 2. Apparent Indifference of Paul to the Mortal Life 
of Jesus. 3. Clear Statement and Explanation of the Phenomenon. 


i HE pretended antagonism between Jesus and 
Paul is still an article of belief in certain 
rationalistic schools. For many critics Paul 
remains the founder of the Church, the creator 
of its theology, the propagator of asceticism, 

the promoter of the sacraments, and the determined enemy 
of everything free, spontaneous, vital, and vivifying in that 
individual religion which is the true religion of Jesus. On this 
account Nietzsche the superman, the mystical critic Paul de 
Lagarde, and Abbé Loisy devote a kind of personal hatred to 
St Paul. The German Bé6tticher, who calls himself Paul de 
Lagarde, treats the Apostle as a hallucinated fanatic with a 
disordered mind, who would have ruined the Gospel, if the 
Gospel could have perished. Nietzsche calls him ambitious, 
tricky, intriguing, and superstitious, and his writings a dis- 
honour to Christianity. M. Loisy sees in him nothing but 
word-play and fantastic fancy, and warns us that ‘“‘ the 
mentality of Paul is not that of an educated man, but rather 
that of a primitive man dominated by his impressions and 
taking for realities the images which crowd one another in 
his brain.’’ 

Hostility towards the Doctor of the Gentiles has aroused in 
England and Germany a religious movement which expresses 
itself in the rallying cries: ‘*‘ Back to Christ! Los von 
Paulus!’’ In 1869 Renan predicted that the disastrous 
hegemony of Paul would soon reach its conclusion: ‘‘ After 
three hundred years of being the Christian teacher par 
excellence, Paul, in our time, sees his reign ending; Jesus, 
on the contrary, is more vital than ever. It is no longer the 
Epistle to the Romans which is the résumé of Christianity, 
it is the Sermon on the Mount. True Christianity will endure 
for ever, and it comes from the Gospels, not from the 
Epistles. The writings of Paul have been a dangerous reef, 
the cause of the principal defects in Christian theology. Paul 
is the father of the subtle Augustine, the arid Thomas 

22 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 23 


Aquinas, the gloomy Calvinist, the crabbed Jansenist, and 
author of the ferocious theology which damns and predestines 
to damnation. Jesus is the father of all who seek- the repose 
of their souls in dreams of the ideal.’’? 


2. Some still bolder critics radically do away with the 
problem of the relations between Jesus and Paul, either by 
withdrawing from Paul the authorship of all his Epistles 
without exception or by disputing the very existence of 
Jesus; but in spite of the noisy successes which were won 
by the former in Holland and by the others in Germany, their 
paradoxes have met with so much indifference and disdain 
among the immense majority of critics in all lands and of all 
schools that we do not wish to make ourselves ridiculous by 
taking them seriously.? 

One objection, however, is so specious that it must not be 
lightly pushed aside. How does it happen that the mortal 
life of Jesus occupies such a small place in the teaching of 
the Apostle, and that the Paul’s Christ seems so different 
from the Christ of the Synoptists? 

However this phenomenon may be explained, it cannot be 
attributed to ignorance. For is it possible that Paul, con- 
verted almost on the morrow of the resurrection, wished to 
know nothing of the life and teaching of him who had just 
appeared to him: and that he learned nothing from Ananias 
and the Christians of Damascus, with whom he lived on two 
occasions, before and after his journey to Arabia? Always 
in touch with the immediate disciples of Jesus, he had 
Barnabas for a collaborator at Antioch, in Cyprus and in 
Asia Minor; Silas accompanied him in his second mission, 
the duration of which was not less than three years; the two 
future historians of Jesus, St Mark and St Luke, lived in- 
timately with him, one at the beginning and at the end of his 
apostolic career, the other during the last half. And I have 
not spoken of his relations with Peter and James and the 
deacon Philip and the faithful in Antioch and Jerusalem. 
Was ever a man better placed to become, fundamentally 
and in detail, acquainted with the words and deeds of the 
Saviour? 

But, it will be said, he takes no interest in them. His 
Christ is not the Christ of history; he is the dead and risen 
Christ, the Christ seated in glory at the right hand of the 
Father, ready to return in the clouds of heaven to take his 
followers into his kingdom. Does he not confess this when 
he writes: ‘‘ Henceforth we know no man according to the 


2 Renan, Saint Paul, pp. 569-570. 

* We have spoken of the former in Vol. I, pp. 4-6. Whoever would learn 
more of the others should consult Fillion, Jésus ou Paul ? (five articles which 
appeared in the Revue du clergé francats in 1912). 


24 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


flesh; and if we have known Christ according to the flesh, 
yet now we know him [so] no longer ”’ ?? 

To argué from a text so obscure that everyone interprets 
it to suit himself, is not a good method. According to the 
best exegetes, Paul means that, on becoming a Christian, he 
adopted different thoughts and feelings in regard to every- 
thing. He no longer ought to know anyone according to the 
flesh, and even if he had known Christ according to the flesh, 
he ought not so to know him any longer now. This text 
proves clearly that Paul, when converted, has on every subject 
loftier, more spiritual, and more supernatural ideas, but it 
does not at all prove that he takes no interest in the earthly 
life of Jesus. 

St Paul’s portrait of Jesus, as we shall soon see, is not a 
mere sketch, it is a faithful picture which the evangelists 


1 2 Cor. v, 16: “Qore pets azo Itaque nos ex hoc neminem novt- 
Tob viv ovdéva oidayev Kata odpKa: et mus secundum carnem ; et st cogno- 
Kat éyvibkapev Kata odpKa Xptorov,adA\a vimus secundum carnem Christum, 
viv ovKért ywrwrwoKopev. sed nunc jam non novimus. 


The general idea of this difficult verse is furnished by the immediate con- 
text. Whoever thoroughly understands the meaning of the death of Christ, 
comprehends that he is to live for him alone and to have henceforth no more 
terrestrial and carnal thoughts on any subject whatever (verse 15) ; hence (were) 
he, Paul—and those who resemble him—no longer appreciates and esteems 
anyone according to the flesh, not even Christ (verse 16) ; itis thus (ore) that he 
becomes a new creature, a soul renewed in thoughts and affections (verse 17). 

It follows: (1) That the henceforth (amo rot viv) has for its point of de- 
parture the moment when Paul realized the significance of the death of Christ 
for us (xpivavras rotro)—that is to say, the time of his conversion —2. That 
the words according to the flesh (kata ocdpxa) have a subjective, not an 
objective, sense—that is to say, they qualify the Christian’s manner of thinking 
and feeling, and not the obiect of his thoughts and feelings. The place of the 
words according to the fiesh shows that they refer to the verb (novimus, 
cognovimus, oldapev, éyvdxayev) and not to the objective case (nemzinem, 
Christum). Moreover, whether the expression accordine to the flesh qualifies 
the subject knowing or the object known, really matters little ; since, any way, 
their mutual relation having changed through the effect of the mystical 
death of the Christian in Christ, the knowledge of this relation ought there- 
fore to change also.—3. That Christ (Xptords, without the article) signifies 
the person itself of Jesus Christ and not the Messiah. This is the evident 
meaning of Xptords in the whole context, and this appears very clearly 
in verse 16 from the contrast between no one (ovdéva) and Christ (Xpiordv 
—Christ, meaning the Messiah, requires the definite article). 

This being admitted, the whole question reduces itself to this: Is the 
hypothesis real or unreal? JIn other words, does Paul make a concession 
to his opponents, or does he start out from a supposttion, possible but not 
proven, in order to emphasize his thought? If the hvpothesis is real the 
meaning will be: “ Formerly, it is true, I knew Christ according to the 
flesh, but now I do not wish to know him thus any more.” Many exegetes 
adopt this interpretation, but they are hard put to it to explain the concession 
oo the Apostle reasonably. They propose one of the three following para- 
phrases : 

A. “ Before my conversion I regarded Jesus Christ as a malefactor and 
justly put to death: now I have more correct notions concerning him” 
(Cornely, B. Weiss, Plummer [1915], Bachmann [1918], etc.). But how can 
we suppose that Pau] assumes so solemn a tone to end in such a truism ? 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 26 


complete, without modifying its expression. But what is the 
use of our lingering over a difficulty which exists only in the 
imagination of the critics? The charge which is brought 
against the Apostle of making so little use of the acts and 
words of Jesus is inconclusive. If it had any foundation, it 
would apply equally well—and even more so—to ali the other 
writers of the New Testament except the evangelists, whose 
special aim it is to relate the Saviour’s life. Regard being 
had to relative proportions, allusions to the earthly life of 
Jesus are not more numerous in these authors; it can even be 
maintained with assurance that they are fewer in number. 
The question, therefore, assumes a completely different 
aspect. If any difficulty remains, it is not St Paul that it 
specially concerns; it needs a general explanation. 

Here, to begin with, are two evangelists: St John and St 
Luke. Whether the author of the fourth Gospel is the be- 
loved disciple or not, matters little for the moment; he 
certainly composed the Epistle which serves as a preface to 
the Gospel and in which he declares himself expressly to 
have been an eye and ear witness. Now what does he teach 
us there of Jesus? He mentions casually his incarnation, his 
holiness, his love for us; he perhaps alludes discreetly to the 
institution of baptism; and that is all. Will anyone accuse 
him of ignorance? And will anyone say that the author of 
the Acts, who is also certainly the author of the third Gospel, 
was unacquainted with the life of Jesus? Yet in the Acts, 
except in the first chapter, which is a continuation of the 
Gospel history, he makes very few allusions to Jesus. He 
reports only one saying of his, which he has not recorded in 
the Gospel, and—a remarkable circumstance—he puts it in 
the mouth of Paul. As Harnack has admirably said: ‘‘ If we 





B. “‘ There was a time, I confess, even after my converston, when I knew 
Christ, his person and his work imperfectly ; but my knowledge of him has 
progressed and it is now spiritual and just ” (Baur, Holsten, Jowett, etc.). 
This exegesis, defended only by heterodox writers, is contrary to what we 
have said above and contradicts the express and reiterated assertions of the 
Apostle, who admits in his Gospel neither vacillation nor change. 

C. “ Before my conversion I knew Jesus living on the earth, mortal and 
susceptible of suffering ; but that was a carnal knowledge, of which I have now 
divested myself ”’ (Schlatter, J. Weiss, Moe, etc.).—-But, supposing that Paul 
had known Jesus personally—which is improbable—why should he wish to 
forget it? And what would fit in with such forgetfulness ? 

Since the concession gives us no satisfactory meaning, we must fall back 
on the unreal hypothesis. Heinrici, in his great commentary, and Reitzen- 
stein (Die hellentst. Mysterienrel., p. 195) show that from the philological 
point of view there is no objection to it. The meaning then is: “ Evenif I 
had known Christ according to the flesh—which is not the case and which 
has nothing to do with the present question—I no longer wish to know him 
thus.”” To know Christ according to the flesh is to know him after the manner 
of the enemies of Paul; to know him according to the spirtt is to know him 
as his resurrection and glorification have taught us to know him in the light 
of the Holy Spirit. 


26 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


knew of this author only the Acts and not the Gospel, we 
should doubtless pass the following judgement on him: this 
man knows nothing of the Gospel history; above all, he is 
absolutely ignorant of the synoptic tradition, since the only 
saying of Jesus that he has preserved is not found in this 
source.’’ An absurd conclusion; but a style of reasoning 
identical with that which we are reflecting. 

Suppose that the first Epistle to the Corinthians had not 
been written, or that it had been lost: would the critics fail 
to assert that Paul is tgnorant of the institution of the 
Eucharist and the circumstances of the resurrection? This 
hypothesis plainly shows the fallacy of the argument. The 
most natural explanation, both of St Paul and the others as 
well, is that they are addressing themselves to Christians 
already instructed in the life of Jesus, and that their writings 
take for granted catechetical teaching in the Church, but are 
not themselves imparting it. 


3. The principal difference between Paul and the Synoptists 
lies in the manner of presenting the person and the work of 
Jesus. Whence comes this difference? 

When Jesus wished to make himself recognized as the 
Messiah and the King of Israel, the delivery of this message 
encountered many and varied difficulties—the jealous suscepti- 
bility of the Romans, the fanatical and revolutionary infatua- 
tion of the patriotic Jews, and, above all, the lack of 
intelligence and the crude conceptions of the people. The 
ideas held in regard to the Messiah were far from being 
uniform; but in general the people dreamed of a national 
hero, invested with power and glory, who would shake off 
_ foreign domination, annihilate or subdue the enemies of 
Israel, reassemble the Diaspora, and inaugurate at Jeru- 
salem an era of justice, prosperity, happiness, and peace. 
All this was to burst forth suddenly, without human assist- 
ance, by a lightning-like intervention on the part of 
Jehovah. No idea of a poor, suffering Messiah was 
prevalent, or of a spiritual reign of God, demanding the 
inward co-operation of souls and establishing itself by 
degrees in intensity as well as in extent. 

The very name Messiah conjured up in almost all the 
Jews of that time incomplete, incorrect, and actually false 
notions. It could be used only with circumspection. At the 
beginning of his preaching Jesus seems to avoid it purposely, 
as if he feared to be misunderstood. It is true, he does not 
reject it when it is applied to him; he approves it solemnly 
six months before his death, when uttered by St Peter; he 
lays claims to it before Pilate and the Sanhedrim, together 
with the title of the Son of God; but, after all, he does not 
employ it habitually. The expression which he ordinarily 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 27 


uses to designate himself is that of Son of Man. This name 
had the advantage of being understood in a Messianic 
sense, without awakening the revolutionary passions of the 
zealots. Jesus, therefore, takes it as his usual appellation. 
When he is asked to prove his mission, if he sometimes 
invokes the testimony of the Baptist, of the Scriptures, and 
of his heavenly Father, he appeals most frequently to his 
miracles and, above all, to his resurrection, which remains 
the principal reason for credibility. 

But, after the resurrection, three great changes occur in 
the way in which the apostles speak of Jesus. First, the 
name Son of Man has no further raison d’étre. The 
evangelists preserve it in order to remain faithful to his- 
torical truth ; but all the others replace it by more significant 
terms: Christ (that is to say, Messiah), Lord (translation of 
the name Jehovah in the LXX), and, above all, Son of God. 
This last title, the most comprehensive and just, was also 
that which the resurrection had best demonstrated.—Not 
only does the miracle of the resurrection eclipse all the 
others, but there is no more need of another miracle. St 
Peter is content to appeal to it. St Paul does the same. 
Henceforth, if we except the transfiguration, which was a 
kind of prelude to the glorious resurrection, no particular 
miracle will be mentioned in the New Testament, outside the 
Gospels. Finally, although the earthly life of Jesus always 
formed the subject of catechetical instruction, the chief effort 
was rather to show Christ to converts as he is now in glory, 
the invisible Head of the Church and the all-powerful inter- 
cessor with the Father. 

What we have said of Christology applies in a still higher 
degree to the doctrine of salvation. Let us confine ourselves 
to one point only: the preaching of the kingdom of God. 

It was in order to avoid giving offence to the Roman 
authorities and to correct the vague, erroneous or extrava- 
gant notions which the Jews entertained about the Messianic 
kingdom, that Jesus in the midst of his Galilean ministry 
had inaugurated his system of teaching by parables. In 
these he showed that the kingdom is not only God’s claim 
upon the individual soul, but his social reign in a society in 
which the good and the bad are mingled. He made promin- 
ent the spiritual and universal character of this kingdom, in 
which the Gentiles have their appointed place, and from 
which the unbelieving Jews are excluded. 

But, once the true notion of the kingdom was understood, 
and when the concrete realization of it was seen in the Church, 
the pedagogic réle of the parables came to an end. We no 
longer find any trace of them outside the Synoptists, neither 
in St John, nor in the rest of the New Testament, nor in the 
apostolic Fathers. No doubt the parables always formed part 


28 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of the elementary catechetical teaching, as a piece of history, 
together with an epitome of the life of Jesus; but they no 
longer served to illustrate the nature of the kingdom of God, 
the very name of which tended to disappear, to give place to 
that of the Church. On this particular point St Paul is still 
the one who comes nearest to the teaching of Jesus, as it 
is recorded in the Synoptists. 

These brief remarks are enough to show why and how the 
Gospel preaching concerning the person and the work of the 
Saviour necessarily underwent a transformation in passing 
from Jesus to the apostles. The cause of this change was 
the very fact of the resurrection of Jesus and of the founda- 
. tion of the Church on the day of Pentecost. And it has been 
proved that in this Paul does not differ at all from his 
colleagues in the apostolate. — 


II—Tue AprostToiic CATECHESIS 


1. Its Existence. 2. Its Historical, Dogmatic, Liturgical and Moral 
Contents. 


1. It is to-day generally conceded that St Paul derives his 
ideas from Jesus, and does not substitute his own notions for 
the teaching of the Master. It becomes even more and more 
evident that it is impossible to understand him clearly 
without a basis of religious instruction common to all the 
Christian communities. This statement is not a new one. 
Reuss wrote in 1852: ‘‘ The Epistles [of Paul] are addressed 
without exception to persons already familiar with the ideas 
of the Gospel; they are by no means intended to give either 
elementary or complete instruction to their readers. Dogma 
is mentioned fragmentarily and as occasion calls for it ; often 
it is simply alluded to, as to something already known. The 
real Christian instruction had been given orally, and no doubt 
in sequence and entirety.’’? 

Nothing is more certain. St John, at the end of his career, 
bequeaths his episodical and complementary Gospel to his 
faithful companions who had long been familiar with the life 
and works of Jesus. St Luke addresses his to a catechumen, 
not so much to initiate him into a knowledge of Christianity, 
as to make known to him “‘ the truth of those words in which 
he had been instructed ’’ orally. . 

As for St Paul, all his letters are enigmas, if we suppose 
that the persons to whom they are addressed are unacquainted 
with the elements. of the Christian faith. These elements did 
not vary according to the fancy of the preachers ; they corre- 
sponded to a uniform type, to which all the teachers of the 
Gospel had to conform. Paul, on returning from his first 


* Theol. chrét. au siecle apost.3, Strasbourg, 1864, vol. li, p. 9. 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 29 


apostolic mission, expounded his Gospel in detail before the 
whole assembly of Jerusalem; then, separately, to the 
principal heads of this church, especially to James the 
brother of the Lord, to Peter, prince of the apostles, and to 
John, the beloved disciple. The aim of this communication 
was to show them that the Doctor of the Gentiles had not 
gone astray, and was not departing from the teaching 
common to them all. The result was what was to be 
expected. ‘‘ The pillars of the Church,’”’ said St Paul, 
‘* added nothing to me.’’! They found nothing to find fault 
with, nothing to rectify, and nothing to add to in his doctrine. 
They conferred upon him nothing but what he already 
possessed, and they taught him nothing that he did not 
know before. But, on his part, he does not boast of having 
taught them anything; for if, to a certain extent, there are 
two ways of proclaiming the Gospel, according to whether 
the hearers are Jews or Gentiles, there is, after all, really 
only one Gospel, that of Jesus Christ. Paul never pretends 
to have instructed the other apostles, and he never finds in 
them any error or doctrinal difference to criticize. They and 
he are subject to one and the same higher rule: the teaching 
of Jesus Christ. 

Such is the rule which both catechists and catechumens ~ 
have to obey. ‘‘ Let him that is instructed in the word,”’ 
says St Paul to the Galatians, ‘‘ communicate to him that 
instructeth him, in all good things.’’? The exact meaning of 
this recommendation is a matter of dispute. According to 
some, the catechumen should try to participate in the spiritual 
and intellectual possessions of the catechist by paying atten- 
tion to the word of the Gospel, and especially by imitation. 
According to others, whose interpretation is more widely 
known and seems to us better, the catechumen should share 
with his catechist the temporal goods which he possesses, in 
exchange for the spiritual blessings which he receives from 
him, because the preacher of the Gospel has a right to re- 


1 Gal. ii, 6: pot of Soxodvres ovdév mpocavefevro. See Vol. I, p. 48. 
Ovdsév mpocavéfevro does not mean, as certain exegetes wish to prove 
(Sieffert, Lagrange, Loisy), ‘‘ they did not impose any new burden upon me,” 
but rather “‘ they did not give me anything new from what they possessed” 
(this explains the middle voice). The beginning of the phrase ad 27s autem 
gut videbantur aliquid esse anticipates the complementary words mzhzl 
accepi vel didici. This is the thought which Paul expresses by changing 
the construction, a thought which agrees well with the idea that precedes 
and with the one that follows. 

2 Gal. vi, 6: Kowwvelrw 8€ 6 Karnxovpevos tov Adyov TH KaTnxobvTe ev 
naow dyabois. See, for details, Cornely, Lagrange or Lightfoot. In 
translating xarnxovpevos by catechumen and xatnxav by catechist, we do not 
mean to give these words the technical sense which they received after the 
institution of the catechumenate. Here the catechist is one who teaches the 
Christian doctrine (rov Adyov), and the catechumen is one who is taught, 
whether he is baptized or not. 


30 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


muneration. But this divergence of views is unimportant 
for our present investigation. It results clearly from our 
text that there were then catechists, who were charged by a 
competent authority with the task of instructing the new 
converts, or who assumed that duty voluntarily; also that 
there were catechumens to whom the Word was. taught 
—namely, the Gospel of Christ; and that therefore there 
was a system of catechetical teaching, without which there 
could be neither catechists nor catechumens. The latter were 
probably not only the candidates for baptism, but rather 
all the converts whose religious instruction was still in- 
complete. 

This system of instruction was not left to individual in- 
spiration, but was identical in its import and uniform in its 
presentation. St Paul writes to the Romans: ‘‘ You have 
obeyed from the heart unto that form (réros) of doctrine, 
into which you have been delivered.’’! But this form, this 
type of doctrine, is imposed no less imperiously on the 
preachers than on the faithful themselves. When the Apostle 
wishes to utter a warning against the awakening doubts of 
the Corinthians on the subject of the resurrection of the dead, 
he refers them to his oral teaching : 


I make known unto you, brethren, the Gospel which I preached to 
you, which also you have received and wherein you stand, by which 
also you are saved, if you hold fast what I preached unto you, otherwise 
you have believed in vain. 

For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received, how that 
Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was 
buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures ; 
and that he was seen by Cephas, and after that by the Twelve. Then 
was he seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom the 
majority remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep. After 
that, he was seen by James, then by all the Apostles. And, last of all, 
he was seen also by me, as by an abortive. For I am the least of the 
Apostles and am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted 
the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am ; and his 
grace in me hath not been void ; but I have laboured more abundantly 
than they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God with me. 

Thus, whether I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.? 





1 Rom. vi, 17: dankovoare ex Kapdias els dv mapedd0nre tumov Sidaxqs. 
The grammatical attraction is, it seems, to be explained thus: témw diSayijs 
eis dv mapeddOnre (the type of doctrine to which you have been delivered). 
Seeberg prefers to explain: ets rémov SiSayis dv mapedo0nre, but the 
construction appears forced and the meaning of it difficult. 

Three conclusions result from this text : (2) The tumos d:Say7s means a 
fixed and uniform teaching, for r¥os signifies “a pattern,” ‘an exemplar.”’ 
Euthymius, following Chrysostom, thinks that it is a question especially 
of moral teaching.—(4) The converts have been delivered to this rule of 
conduct, because, expressing the will of God, it has for them an imperative 
character.—(c) But, when once it has become a rule valid for all the churches, 
the preachers also are obliged to conform to it. 

1 Cor. xv, 1-11. The conclusion (elre ody €yw elre éxeivot otrws 
xnptooouey Kal otrws émorevoare) proves clearly the fact of a catechetica 
system common to all the preachers and to all the believers in all the churches 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 31 


Jesus Christ dead, buried, risen the third day, according to 
the Scriptures, and his appearance to Peter, to the Twelve, 
to more than five hundred disciples at once, to James, and to 
Paul himself; this is what all the faithful must have heard 
from the mouth of the Apostle and his colleagues. This text 
is extremely important as a specimen of the apostolic form 
of teaching, for it allows us to conclude that the facts con- 
cerning the Saviour’s life occupied a far greater place in the 
preaching of the Apostle than in his writings, and that his 
first teaching was precise and, so to speak, stereotyped like 
a catechism. Paul does not pretend to reproduce all his oral 
Gospel; he transcribes only a fragment of it, that which is 
applicable to his present design, without adding, as else- 
where, that he has it from the Lord himself, for he can very 
well owe the knowledge of these facts to eye-witnesses. 
What he expressly affirms is that, on these fundamental 
points, the teaching of all the preachers and the faith of all 
the faithful are identical: Sive enim ego, sive illi, sic prae- 
dicamus et sic credidistts. 

What are the principal articles of this primitive catechism? 
The Epistle to the Hebrews gives us a concise idea of it: 


Wherefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on 
to things more perfect ; - 

Not laying again the foundation of penance from dead works and of 
faith in God, 

Of the doctrine of baptisms and imposition of hands, 

Of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgement.} 


The author has just told the Hebrews that, having been 
Christians for a long time, the first elements of the faith are 
no longer suited to them, and that they need a stronger and 


PR a 


(2) Paul says that he has preached the resurrection €v mpwrows, not 
necessarily in the first place, but as a fundamental article. 

(6) He cites, as witnesses of the resurrection, only persons still living and 
of unquestionable authority ; and curiously, no women. 

(c) He makes no difference between the appearance of Christ to the first 
Apostles and the appearance with which Christ favoured him. As regards 
certainty and reality, these are facts of the same order. 

1 Heb. vi, 1-2: Aid ddévres rév ris dpyfis tod Xpucrod Adyor emi rHv 
rehevdrnta gepwpeba, yi) madw Oeuddvov karaBadrdpevor petavolas amo vexpav 
épywy Kal miorews emit Oedv, 


Barricpav Sidaynv émBecews TE xerpav, 
dvaordcews vexpav Kat xpimatos atwviov. 


(a) The verb depdefa could include the readers (let us go, you and I), 
but it is better to understand it of the author himself who is going to add 
example to words (a¢évres), and to whom alone it belongs to lay the founda- 
tions of faith (xaraBa\Adpevor). Moreover, the general sense remains the 
same. 

(6) The word of the beginning concerning Christ (rdv ris apyns too 
Xpicrod Adyov) is defined by its contrast with a more perfect teaching 
(emt ri reAevéryra) and bya similar phrase in the preceding chapter, verse 12. 
It is, therefore, the A BC of Christianity. 


32 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


more virile nourishment. He exhorts them, therefore, not to 
be content with the milk of children, but to assimilate solid 
food corresponding to their age; or rather, he declares that 
he is himself going to rise to loftier considerations, more 
worthy of their maturity in the faith. He will, then, put 
aside the first teaching concerning Christ, the first elements 
of revelation. A variation from the original reading throws 
some uncertainty on the text here. According to one version, 
the rudiments of Christianity would comprise six items 
grouped in pairs: penance and faith, baptism and confirma- 
tion, the resurrection and judgement. But the other reading, 
which appears to us the better one, identifies penance and faith 
with the foundation laid at the beginning by the preachers of. 
the Gospel, and then the composition of the credo consists 
of four items, grouped thus: the doctrine of baptisms (no 
doubt the distinction between the baptism of John and that 
of Jesus, or between the ritual purifications of the Jews and 
Christian baptism), and the laying on of hands (that is, con- 
firmation conferred after the baptism); the dogmas of the 
resurrection of the dead and of the last judgement. This 
was, in fact, by the very nature of things, and according to 
historical data, the most abbreviated early catechism used. It 
will appear less concise if it be remembered that the under- 
standing of baptism and of confirmation necessarily pre- 
supposes a knowledge of the Trinity and of grace, and that 
the glorious resurrection substantially includes the work of 
redemption. . 


2. History, dogma, liturgy, and morals: such were the 
four primordial elements of the apostolic catechesis. 

The historical teaching was concerned with the acts, 
miracles, and teachings of Jesus. It is inconceivable that 
the preaching of the apostles passed over in silence the life 
and words of the founder of Christianity. Before believing 
in him, the catechumens had to know what he had been, 
done, and said. Assuredly certain features were made more 
prominent than others: his descent from the lineage of 
David, predicted by the prophets, his birth from a woman 
(without any mention of a mortal father), his baptism and 
the testimony of the Baptist, his life of obedience, humility, 
and renunciation, the principal manifestations of his super- 
human power, the institution of the Eucharist; the most re- 
markable circumstances of his passion, his resurrection on 


a a RRR RR a ST 


(c) We adopt the reading &Sayrv in place of diSax7js. The accusative 
didaxyv is then in apposition with Geuédvov, which he explains: ‘ Let us 
not lay again the foundation, which consists of penance for dead works and 
of faith in God ; I wish to speak of the doctrine of baptisms,” etc. If we should 
read diday7js, all these genitives would depend on OewéAvov, and the founda- 
tion of the faith would comprise six elements, grouped in pairs. 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 33 


the third day, his appearances to the disciples, and his 
triumphal ascension. But everything leads us to believe that 
the instruction was not confined to this brief résumé. Apollos 
had received a very incomplete training in this respect, since 
he still knew only the baptism of John; nevertheless, he was 
able to teach accurately the things concerning Jesus—that is 
to say, evidently—if these expressions are compared with 
similar utterances—the life, deeds, and discourses of the 
Master.* St Luke takes it for granted that Theophilus, the 
catechumen or neophyte, to whom he addresses his Gospel, is 
already acquainted with the Gospel history. And when we 
read that St Paul, while a captive at Rome, taught without 
hindrance and in full liberty the things concerning the Lord 
Jesus,” we must assume that he made explanations of im- 
portance, and admit that mere allusions by the way, or a 
few hurried details about the earthly life of Jesus would not 
at all justify the assertion of the author of the Acts. 

More concise, no doubt, was the dogmatic teaching. It 
does not appear to us proved that the apostles had an almost 
stereotyped compendium, which they gave the neophytes to 
commit to memory in a nearly invariable form.* At least, 
perhaps excepting certain cases in which the teaching was 
completed after baptism, they set before them a rudimentary 
Credo, of which the dogma of the Trinity always formed a 
part. Indeed, all the Symbols said to be those of the apostles, 
in spite of their remarkable variations, are uniformly cast in 
a trinitarian mould. The baptismal formula, employed from 
earliest times, as well as the doxology Glory be to the Father 
and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, in use at a very early 
date, proves that the three divine Persons were always 


? Acts xviii, 25. For the expression ra rept "Inood cf. Col. iv, 8; Eph. vi, 22. 

* Acts xxvili, 31: Praedicans regnum Det et docens quae sunt de Domino 
Jesu Christo (ra wept rob Kupiov ’I. X.). 

® Cf. Seeberg in Der Katechismus der Urchristenhett, Leipzig, 1903, and 
Das Evangelium Christi, Leipzig, 1905. But his apostolic syméo/ is much 
too limited. It may be reduced to this (Katechtsmus, p. 85): “‘ The living 
God, Creator of all things, sent his Son, born of the race of David, Jesus Christ, 
who died for us according to the Scriptures, was buried and rose again on the 
third day according to the Scriptures, sitteth at the right hand of God in 
heaven, having subjected to himself principalities, powers and dominions, 
and will return in the clouds of heaven invested with power and glory.” 

We grant Seeberg that his embryonic Credo did really form part of the 
apostolic system of instruction, but we do not think that this Credo was 
presented everywhere under an almost invariable form, and especially that 
it was limited to that form. The article of the last judgement by Christ 
could not have been wanting in the first preaching of St Paul (Rom. ii, 16 ; 
xiv, 10; 2 Tim. iv, 1 ; Acts xvii, 21, etc.), nor in that of the other Apostles ; 
for it was a fundamental and elementary dogma (Heb. vi, 2; cf. Acts x, 12; 
1 Pet. iv, 5). But without stopping to deal with criticisms in detail, the 
ace formulary of faith was certainly founded upon the dogma of the 

rinity. 


I, = 


34 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


closely associated in the thought and adoration of the faith- 
ful. St Paul presupposes in all his converts, whatever may 
have been their origin, acquaintance with the person and 
activity of the Holy Spirit. All the more must they have 
known what Christ was before the incarnation and what were 
the bonds uniting him, the Spirit, and the Father. Nor is it 
doubtful either that the subject of the incarnation and the 
value of the redemptive death of the Messiah, Son of God, 
entered into the framework of this primitive Credo. Let us 
note also that the teaching of the second coming of Christ, 
of the resurrection of the dead, and of the last judgement 
forms the foundation of all the sermons of Paul recorded 
in the Acts,? just as it is one of the fundamental points of 
the Church’s elementary teaching, according to the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. 

When a catechumen became a member of the Church, it 
was necessary to explain to him the meaning and the import _ 
of the sacred rites which united him to Christ. This is what 
may be called the liturgical teaching. All the Christians 
whom Paul addresses are supposed to know and understand 
perfectly the value and mystical signification of baptism, 
confirmation, and the Eucharist. That this initiation was 
the end of the catechetical teaching can be concluded from 
the recital in Acts,‘ that it was common to all the faithful 
appears from the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which “ the 
doctrine of baptisms and of the imposition of hands’? is 
ranked among ‘‘ the first elements of the oracles of God”? 
and ‘* the initial institution of Christ.’’> To liturgical teach- 
ing is united the Lord’s Prayer, which it was the custom to 
recite three times a day, perhaps at the usual hours of 
Jewish prayer, and its general use is not in any case later 
than the appearance of the first and third Gospel. ® 

The teaching of morals was a matter of course, and the 
Talmud shows us that it was given regularly to proselytes 
from Judaism.” It would be easy but unnecessary to prove 
that this practice was in use throughout the whole Church 
from the end of the second century onwards; and it can even 
be proved that it goes back much further, and probably to 
the very beginning. In the year 112, Pliny the Younger 
learned that Christians took an oath not to commit either 


? Acts xix, 2 ; Gal. iii, 2-5, etc. 

* Rom. ii, 16; xiv, 10; 2 Tim. iv, 1; Acts Xvli, 31, etc. Cf. Heb. vi, 2; 
Acts x, 12. 

* Rom. vi, 3 (baptism); 1 Cor. xi, 23 (Eucharist) ; Gal. iii, 2-3; Acts 
xix, 2-6 (confirmation). 

* Acts xviii, 25. 5 Heb. vi, 2 and vy, 12. 

* The Didache, ix, 3, prescribes the recital of the Lord’s Prayer three times 
aday. Cf. Bindemann, Das Gebet um tagliche Vergebung der Stinden, etc. 
Giitersloh, 1902. 

" Mishna, Gerim, i, 1-4; Baraitha, Yebamoth, 47a-b. 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 35 


theft, larceny, adultery, or cheating ;! an oath which must 
have coincided with the reception of baptism. Indeed, St 
Justin defines converts as ‘‘ those who are persuaded of the 
truth of our doctrines, and believe what we believe, and 
pledge themselves to live accordingly.’’? The Didache also 
prescribes that the contents of the Two Ways* should be read 
to the catechumen before baptizing him. The apostles 
always concluded their first sermon with the words: ‘‘ There- 
fore be converted and do penance.’’* It was, of course, 
necessary for them to explain what conversion meant and 
what the “‘ dead works ’’® were, for which the proselyte was 
bound to do penance. The new converts had to ‘“ persevere 
in the doctrine of the apostles,’’® to ‘‘ obey from the heart 
unto that form of doctrine into which they had been 
delivered,’’” and to avoid things contrary to the doctrine 
which they had learned.* All this presupposes a fixed and 
precise oral teaching, and this teaching was called the way 
of the Lord, the way of God, the way of salvation, or simply 
the Way.’ St Paul calls it ‘‘ his way’’!® because he was 
accustomed to impart it in all the churches which he founded. 
Did this brief moral code thenceforth become crystallized ? 
Was it perhaps substantially identical with the little treatise 
known by the name of the Two Ways, which forms the first 
part of the Doctrine of the Apostles, was incorporated in 
the Epistle of Barnabas, and has been discovered in a very 
ancient Latin version? Was it in the main borrowed from 
the Synagogue, at first without any remarkable change, but 
later receiving an interpolation of a specifically Christian 
hue? These are interesting questions, but they lie beyond 
the scope of this volume. 


t 

1 Epist., x, 96. * Apol., i, 61. 

® Doctr. apost., vii, 1. 

* Acts ii, 38 ; iii, 19 ; xvii, 30 ; xx, 21 ; xxvi, 20; cf. 1 Thess. i, 9, etc 

Sy Hebsvists: ® Acts ii, 42. 

7 Rom. vi, 17. SsPEXVinil 7: 

® Acts xiii, 10 ; xviii, 25 ; xvi, 17 ; xxii, 4 ; xxiv, 22. 

*© 1 Cor. iv, 17. Zimotheus vos commonefaciet (spas dvapvyce: = will 
remind you of) vzas meas . . . stcut ubique in omni ecclesia doceo. This rule 
of conduct (ras d8ovs pov) is the moral teaching given formerly to the 
Corinthians by St Paul, conformably (xa0dés) to what he is accustomed to 
teach (88doxw), in every country that he travels through (ravraxod), tn all 
the churches which he founds (€ mdon éxxAqoig). It is only a matter of 
refreshing the memory. 


36 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


IIJ—FOREIGN INFLUENCES 


1. Judaism. 2. Hellenism. 3. Hellenized Oriental Religions. 4. The 
True Sources of Paulinism. 


1. It would be a miracle if the many localities visited by 
the Apostle had not more or less reacted on his way of think- 
ing; for he did not live apart in a tower of ivory, sheltered 
from contact from without. Born in an active and learned 
city, where perhaps more than elsewhere the blending of 
Hellenism with Oriental ideas took place, brought up in the 
very centre of Judaism and affiliated by his own choice as 
well as by family tradition with the sect of the Pharisees, and 
obliged to live in the centre of Greek cities and Roman 
colonies, he must have yielded in some degree to the 
pressure of these different currents. 

The traces of rabbinism visible in him are, however, rare 
and even questionable. Moreover, the five or six examples 
usually alleged! relate only to accessory matters, lying on the 
extreme periphery of his thought ; for we do not call the use 
of the typical meaning of the Scriptures rabbinism, nor the 
oratorical use of the accommodative sense, nor yet the 
progress of doctrines contained in embryo in the ancient 
revelation, such as the spirituality of the soul, the reversibility 
of merits, and the habit of attributing to the Messiah titles 
belonging to Jehovah. 

The rabbinism of St Paul’s time is unknown to us. What 
we call such is the artificial product of a school, formed after 
the ruin of the Temple and. successively transplanted to 
Jamnia, Lydda, Sepphoris, and Tiberias. As the most ancient 
collection of rabbinical decisions, the Mishna, hardly goes 
back as far as the end of the second century, its relations 
with St Paul are always very doubtful. 

Hence contemporary critics do not lay much stress on 
them. Some pretend that the Apostle is inspired rather by 
those numerous speculations at the beginning of the Christian 
era which are generally called apocalypses. Does he not 
quote as Scripture a passage from the Apocalpyse of Elias ?? 


1 They are found in J. Weiss, Das Urchristentum, Gottingen, 1917, 
PP. 332-334. We have discussed them in Vol. I, p.f19-21; for 1 Cor. x, 4, 
see later, p. 147. 

2 1 Cor. ii, 9: Kadas yéyparrat: a ddfaducs ov eldev Kai ods ovK qKovcer, 
Kal émi xapdiav avOpwov ovK avéBn, doa Hroipacey 6 Beds Tots ayamdow avrév. 

Ambrosiaster and Origen (Comment. in Matt., xxvii, 9) affirm that Paul 
here quotes the Apocalypse of Elias. But the date of this apocryphal work 
is entirely unknown, and it is possible that it was interpolated by Christian 
hands. This is what happened to the Ascenszon of Jsatas, which quotes the 
same text as itis found in St Paul. According to a passage preserved in the 
Catenae (Cramer, Catenae tn Paulum, Oxford, 1841, p. 42), Origen asked 
himself whether the Apostle was quoting Isaias freely or whether he borrowed 
his quotation from an apocryphal writer. St Jerome defends the first 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM wy 


He must have read others, for this kind of literature was then 
very popular. What, it has been asked, is his theology if 
not an apocalypse? The expectation of the imminent return 
of Christ explains the temporary character of his moral teach- 
ing. All his thoughts are turned towards the future. He 
longs for one thing only—to enter into the kingdom which 
Christ is about to inaugurate.’ Faith and justification are 
for him only the assurance of taking part in it; the sacra- 
ments (baptism and the Eucharist), which unite us mystically 
with Christ, are the conditions of being admitted to it. All 
Paul’s theology lies in these few dogmas. 

If, however, we reflect that his eschatology is precisely the 
least original aspect of his doctrine, that in this respect he 
does not pass beyond the horizon of the Gospels, that his 
eschatological ideas, far from progressing with time, decline 
little by little and tend to disappear, and that the prominence 
which they have in the first Epistles is due to local circum- 
stances and accidental causes, we are forced to concede that 
apocalyptical Judaism accounts for Pauline thought no better 
than rabbinical Judaism does. Will the partisans of Hellen- 
ism be more fortunate? 


2. By Hellenism is understood either classic Greek culture, 
or the whole collection of the religious and moral ideas of the 
Greek world after Alexander, or the mode of thinking of 
those Jews who were called Hellentsts and adopted the 
Greek language and customs in the Diaspora. 

If St Paul became impregnated with Hellenism, it certainly 
did not take place in his own family. His father was an 
ardent Pharisee, and he himself professed the purest 
Pharisaism. We have seen how small a part profane 
writers? occupied in his early education. Did his sentiments 
change afterwards? Every orthodox Jew, when confronted 
with paganism, experienced a feeling of disgust, indignation, 
and pity. What distinguishes Paul from his compatriots is 
that he joins to this instinctive repulsion for pagan doctrines 
and institutions a lively sympathy for individuals. Moreover, 
he does not limit himself to condemning heathen delusions 
and depravity, he stigmatizes with the same energy what 


alternative vigorously (Comment. in Is., \xiv, 4). In fact, Isaias writes: do rot 
aid@vos ovK HKovoapev ovde of dfOadpoi judy elSov Bedv rAnv cod, Kai Ta Epya cov 
G@ moinoeis Tots vropevovow €édeov. But Paul may have been influenced by 
the remembrance of Isa. Ixv, 16: ov« dvaByoerat abrav emt rhv Kxapdiav. 
See Cornely or Zahn (Geschichte des Kanons, vol. ii, p. 808). 

1 Schweitzer, Geschichte der paulin. Forschung, Tiibingen, 1911, pp. 
187-194. Schweitzer, who had had Kabisch for a predecessor, proposed 
to treat the question thoroughly in a new work ; but he went as a missionary 
to the Congo, March 24, 1913; it is to be feared, therefore, that we may never 
have this fine judgement concerning apocalyptic Paulinism. 

4 See Vol. I, pp. 15-16. 


38 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


appeared to be the best thing in paganism: its philosophy, 
its love of wisdom. This worldly and carnal wisdom he 
repudiates, and commands his converts to keep clear of 
it: ‘‘ Beware, lest any man cheat you by philosophy and 
vain deceit, according to the tradition of men and the 
elements of the world, and not according to Christ.’’! All 
the Epistles are filled with similar passages. What the 
Apostle finds most favourable in paganism (not in order to 
admire it or to excuse it, but in order to condemn it with 
less severity) is the fact that it belongs to the ages of 
ignorance which preceded the coming of the light of the 
Gospel, when the world, still in its infancy, had received but 
an elementary education.2, Who can believe that a man 
animated by such sentiments ever went to the schools of the 
pagans and knowingly borrowed their religious practices or 
doctrines? But perhaps he was influenced by them un- 
awares. 

Tarsus was then the rendezvous of philosophers and the 
boulevard of the Stoics. St Paul has very possibly con- 
versed with them, if only to combat their theories, and 
derived from such intercourse more than one unconscious 
loan. If this hypothesis is false, it is nevertheless not with- 
out some likelihood; yet if we examine it closely, nothing 
corroborates it. The Stoics used a peculiar phraseology, 
especially in treating the subject of morals. Their habit of 
defining and dissecting notions distinguishes them at first 
glance from other philosophers. In order to prove that 
the phraseology of Paul has no connection with theirs, it is 
sufficient to compare their respective lists of moral virtues. 
Of the four cardinal virtues: fortitude (dv8peia) is not even 
named by the Apostle ; temperance (cwdpootvn) is mentioned 
only once, in the Pastorals; prudence (¢pévnois) also once 
only, and then applied to God; as to justice (Sixacoovvn) 
everyone knows that he gives this word a. very different 
meaning. Nor does he show a trace of the secondary virtues 
which divide and subdivide the cardinal virtues ad infinitum. 
Only one word, benignity (ypyordérns), recalls vaguely the 
Stoics’ vocabulary. 

The doctrines differ even more than the phraseology. The 
Stoics often speak of God, the soul, providence, prayer, and 
benevolence ; but these terms have almost nothing in common 
with the corresponding Christian ideas. The God of the 
Stoics is not the personal, good, just, holy, all-powerful God 
whom the Christians adore ; he is the totality of beings, the 
great All, nature, or the law of the world, the intelli- 
gence of the universe, force opposed to matter. The soul 


* Col. ii, 8 ; ef. Rom. i, 18-32 ; 1 Cor. i, 26-ii, 8, etc. 
* Gal. iv, 8-9 ; Eph. ii, 11-13 ; v, 6-8 ; Col. iii, 7-10, etc. 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 39 


is no more immortal than God is personal; it is dissolved 
with the body, returns to the elements, and is !ost in the great 
All, of which it is only a tiny part. Some, indeed, con- 
ceded to it a more or less lengthy survival of the body, but 
not immortality. With these ideas of God and the soul, we 
can imagine what providence and prayer would be. Their 
providence is fatal destiny, the immutable law of the universe, 
the inflexible decree of the blind intelligence which rules the 
world, and is confounded with it. Can there still be any 
cuestion of prayer? What would any Stoic ask of the gods? 
A~deviation from the laws of the world? But that is im- 
possible and impious. Happiness and virtue? But these 
depend on ourselves alone. The typical prayer of the Stoic 
is the formula of Cleanthes, an act of pure and simple re- 
signation to inevitable Destiny—prayer as far from Chris- 
tianity as possible. 

Stoicism was the philosophy of despair; Christianity is the 
religion of hope. Against the evils of life, the Stoic had only 
one antidote —pride; and only one sovereign remedy — 
suicide. Not that there is not something noble and touch- 
ing in this effort to preserve human dignity, in this philan- 
thropy, conformable to reason, but foreign to the feeling 
of pity which was regarded as a weakness, and even in its 
sad resignation to fatality; but there is nothing that re- 
sembles the Christian ideal. Of all the forms of ancient 
philosophy, there is not one more opposed to our religion 
than Stoicism and Pyrrhonism, because the one denies reason 
and the other deifies it.? 

What St Paul owes to Stoicism is not his groundwork of 
ideas, but his style of preaching. The Cynics, the forlorn 
hope of Stoicism, were accustomed to stop passers-by in the 
streets in order to propound to them their system and their 
philosophy of morals. They proceeded by apostrophes, by 
written dialogues, and by brusque and insistent’ questions. 
They fenced verbally with imaginary adversaries and, to the 
objections which struck them, they replied with irony or dis- 
dain rather than by lengthy reasonings. They loved to repeat 
certain words and sayings, which they finally forced into the 
minds of their hearers. There are traces of this in the 
manner of Paul;? and, as St Augustine remarks, he has more 


1 Regarding the pretended relations between Seneca and St Paul, ¢f. 
Aubertin, Sénéyue et St Paul®, Paris, 1872; G. Boissier, La Religion romaine 
ad’ Auguste aux Antonins, Paris, 1878, vol. ii. On Epictetus and St Paul 
A. Bonhéffer, Zpzktet und das Neue Testament, Giessen, 1911; Lagrange, 
La philosophte religieuse d’ Epictéte et le christiantsme, inthe Revue bibligue, 
1912, pp. 5-21 and 192-212. 

2 R. Bultmann, Der Stil der paulin. Predigt und die kynisch-stotsch., 
Diatribe, GOttingen, 1910. See also Martha, Les moralistes sous Pempire 
romatn*, Paris, 1872, and Norden, Antike Kunstprosa, Leipzig, 1898. 


40 THE THEOLOGY OF FSi PAUL 


oratorical artifices borrowed from the rhetoric of his day 
than we might anticipate.? 


3. If, at the present time, there is little tendency to 
exaggerate Paul’s Hellenism, his indebtedness to oriental 
syncretism is readily asserted... This modern view, though 
not likely to endure, is making at this moment considerable 
noise in the world, disturbing the timorous and disquieting 
those who have been hypnotized by German science. It has 
been trumpeted aloud by a small minority of philologists, 
who may be very clever in their own line, but are notoriously 
unfamiliar with scriptural studies. ? 

We must here emphasize what we have said above about 
the attitude of the Apostle in regard to the pagan world. If 
he was averse to paganism in general, the heathen mysteries 
must have filled him with horror.” This is seen clearly in his 
reply to the Colossians, who were led astray by theories and 
practices somewhat analogous to the mysteries. But pre- 
viously he had made once for all a solemn profession of his 
faith, when writing to the Corinthians. The Apostle showed 
them, by five antitheses, the absolute incompatibility between 
the Christian life and pagan customs. Christianity and 
paganism are as much opposed to each other as are yes and 
no, day and night, Christ and Belial, the temple of God and 
a den of uncleanness. 


Bear not the yoke with unbelievers, 

For what participation hath justice with injustice ? 

Or what fellowship hath light with darkness ? 

And what concord hath Christ with Belial ? 

Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever ? 

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols ?# 





* Fxamples in St Augustine, De doctrina christiana, book iv, and in 
J. Weiss, Das Urchristentum, Gottingen, 1917, PP. 303-330. 

? See Note L, pp. 383 ff. 

* 2 Cor: vi, 14-16: 


Mn yivecde érepolvyotvres ariarous: 

Tis yap peroxn Sixatoovvy nal dvopla, 

7 Tis Kowwvla dwri mpds oxdtos; 

Tis 8€ cupdadvnors Xproros mpds BeALap, 

7H Tis pepls more pera aricrov; 

Tis 5€ ovyxardbeats vad Oeod pera eiScdiAwv ; 


The prohibition is formulated in the first phrase ; the reasons for it are given 
in the five succeeding ones. In what does the prohibition consist? ‘Erepo- 
Cvyeiv signifies literally “‘ to be coupled under the same yoke with an animal 
of a different race ” (for example, an ox with an ass ; cf. Lev. xi, 19; Deut. 
XXli, 10: €repdfuyos). The pagans bear a yoke which Christians are not 
to share, and to which they should not be harnessed. Paul speaks of the 
yoke, of which every pagan is the slave, and which to that extent marks him 
asapagan. The prohibition is, therefore, general and is not directed against 
any special relation between Christians and pagans. It is the spirit of 
paganism that it is necessary to avoid in everything. 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 41 


In the eyes of every Christian and Israelite the mysteries 
of paganism branded on the foreheads of their adherents the 
stigma of idolatry. Yet it does not at all follow that 
Christians and Jews could not draw from these mysteries 
comparisons and metaphors. Philo, who speaks with 
supreme disdain of these shameful initiations, as the allies 
of secrecy and darkness and a refuge for thieves and prosti- 
tutes,! occasionally borrows without scruple the language of 
the mysteries and uses it to explain the symbolic meaning 
of the Scriptures.2 The same phenomenon—and a still more 
striking one—is found in Clement of Alexandria. We know 
how drastically he pours out his sarcasm and ridicule upon 
the orgiastic worship and sacred rites of Eleusis.* Neverthe- 
less, he does not hesitate to declare frequently that the perfect 
Christian is the true Eleusinian initiate, who has reached the 
end of his initiation.4 St Paul could therefore employ the 
language of the mysteries, as he employs that of the stadium 
and theatre, especially if it were certain that such terminology . 
was current in every day speech. However that may be, 
the Catholic exegete must always watch these comparative 
studies closely. There is nothing in them to alarm ortho- 
doxy or disturb the faith of the believer. 

We only ask the partisans of the religions geschichtliche 
Methode not to take an analogy for an imitation or a 
similarity of expression as a proof of a dependency of ideas ; 
to proceed in the comparison of texts in some. other way 
than by discovering concordances; and to avoid startling 
anachronisms, such as seeing in the late institution of the 
taurobolium the prototype of baptism, or classing St Paul’s 
Epistles among the Hermetic Books. The novelty of these 
studies was formerly some excuse for mistakes and exaggera- 
tions ; but we should now get rid of such early blunders. 

It is difficult to understand how the champions of religious 
syncretism can see without demur a reminder of the pagan 
mysteries in the following text : 


We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet not the wisdom of this 
world, neither of the princes of this world, that come to naught. But we 
speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God 
ordained before the ages to our glory.® 





1 De sacrificantibus, Mangey, vol. ii, p. 260; Leber quisg. virt. studet, 
vol. li, p. 447. 

2 De Cherubim, vol. ii, p. 147 ; De Sacrif. Abel et Cain, vol. i, p. 173. 

3 Protrepticus, ii, 21-23 ; ed. Stahlin, Berlin, 1905, pp. 10-17. 

“ Stromata, i, 28 ; ii, 10 ; iv, 23; v, 10-11 ; vii, 4, etc. 

6 1 Cor. ii, 6,7: Dodiav AaAodpev ev trois redelois . . . GAAA Aadodpuev Beod 
codiay ev pvarnpiw, Thy dmoKxexpupperny, hv mpowproev 6 Qeds mpd THY alwvwy 
els Sdfav NUdv. 

(a) Meaning of the word 7réAetos.—Those who were initiated into the 
mysteries were not called réeAetor but rereAcopevor, “ having been the sub- 


42 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Two things here, they say, plainly suggest pagan initia- 
tions: the mystery and the mention of perfect men, who are 
none other than the initiated. But that is, to use a common 
expression, taking chalk for cheese. The mystery of Paul 
(uveTjpiov in the singular) is just the contrary of the pagan 
mysteries (uvoryjpia in the plural). The mysteries are sacred 
rites administered by the hierophants of Eleusis in the 
obscurity of the sanctuary ; the mystery of Paul is the secret 
of God regarding the plan of redemption. The mysteries 
are confided to the initiated under a pledge of such absolute 
secrecy that they cannot be divulged without incurring the 
vengeance of the gods; the secret of Paul is no longer a 
secret, since God has revealed it, and the Apostle has re- 
ceived the commission to proclaim it everywhere. The 
mysteries are the property of a little band of privileged 
persons ; the mystery of Paul concerns all men, and all are 
to benefit by it. The mysteries are magical ceremonies which 
pretend to assure happiness in this life and the next, in- 
dependently of moral virtues and spiritual character; the 
mystery of Paul is a truth preached to all Christians to 
sustain their faith and revive their hope. 

If the mystery of Paul is the very opposite of the pagan 
mysteries, so his perfect man has nothing in common with 
the Eleusinian initiate. Paul’s perfect man is the adult, as 
contrasted with the child; he is one who, having reached the 
age of maturity, must be nourished with stronger food, more 
solid doctrines. All Christians have not reached that 
maturity, but it is the duty of all to endeavour to attain to 
it. Between them is no water-tight partition, no impassable 
barrier; there are no privileged hearers, as in the school of 
Pythagoras. The preacher of the Gospel has, of course, to 


eee ee eee ee 


ject of a ceremony of initiation ” (reAer7). What has made some people 
think of a connection here with the mysteries is Plato’s word-play (Phaedr., 
249¢, Tedéous det Tederas teAovpevos réAeos svTwS povos yiyvera), which 
proves nothing for this technical sense of réAetos. The word téAevos_ has 
in St Paul its ordinary meaning of “ accomplished, perfect” (Rom. xii, 2; 
1 Cor. xiii, 10 ; Phil. iii, 5; Col. iv, 12) ; it has the special and classic meaning 
of a grown man in antithesis to a child (Eph. iv, 13 ; 1 Cor. xiv, 20), and this 
is the case here, on account of iii, 1-2: tanquam parvulis in Christo, lac vobts 
potum dedt (vnniois opposed to redelots), 

(4) Meaning of the word puarypiov.—Although év HvoTnpiw might refer 
to Aadodwev, most and the best exegetes make it refer to codiav. The 
absence of the article is no obstacle to this (Rom. v, 15: dSwped ev xdpire), 
Then the expression év pvornpiw has almost the force of an adjective, 
“mysterious, which concerns the mystery or secret of God,’’ the definition 
of which is often given by St Paul (Rom. xvi, 25 ; Eph. i, 9511150351480 
Colt, 207-27 3 lin2 iv, 4) aN othing, either near or remote, makes us think 
here of the mysteries of Paganism. 

See for details Robertson and Plummer, The First Epistle of Paul to the 
Corinthians?, Edinburgh, 1914 (Crit. exeg. Comment.), or Bachmann, Der 
erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther?, Leipzig, 1910 (Zahn Collection). 


THE ORIGINS OF PAULINISM 43 


come down to the mental capacity of his audience; but 
neither St Paul nor the early Church ever knew the system 
of esoteric teaching. 


4. The true origins of Paulinism are now clear: they are 
the Bible and the teaching of Jesus. Having to preach and 
write in Greek, Paul prefers to read and to quote the Greek 
Bible. For him, as for all his compatriots, the Bible is the 
supreme and unquestionable authority, the word of God. It 
is the Book par excellence, the only one which contains all 
truth, the only one which deserves to be studied. It has not 
yet been proved that Paul knew or used any other. His 
language is modelled on that of the Septuagint ; as we shall 
have occasion to show in regard to his psychology. It would 
also be easy, if it had not been already done, to extend the 
demonstration to other subjects as well; his religious con- 
ceptions, too, have their roots in the Old Testament. But 
neither his conceptions nor his language are stereotyped. 
Just as his field of vision far exceeds that of the prophets, 
so the words which he employs undergo an extension and an 
accumulation of meanings proportionate to the progress of 
his doctrines. . 

St Paul interprets the Old Testament in the light of the 
Gospel, which came to complete and to perfect it. We do 
not claim that he derived the teaching of the Master from 
written documents,! for the numerous and remarkable co- 
incidences of ideas and expressions between the evangelists 
and himself are very easily explained by oral tradition and 
apostolic teaching. This almost uniform catechetical instruc- 
tion is an undeniable and informative fact. Outside the 
question of legal observances, there is not a trace of dissen- 
sion between the Doctor of the Gentiles and his colleagues 
in the apostolate, and even this point, less theoretical than 
practical, was quickly and amicably settled. As for the rest, 
there are the same ideas about God, the person of Christ, 
salvation, the sacraments, and the final destinies of man. 
Peter, James, and John, in the assembly at Jerusalem, 
solemnly approved Paul’s Gospel, and the latter has so little 
intention of separating from the others that, in order to cut 
short all doubts and abuses, he appeals to the practice and 
common teaching of the churches. 

For all that, we do not overlook his own personal con- 
tribution. If he always attributes a divine origin to his 
preaching, if he affirms that he has received the Spirit of the 
Lord, if he lays claim to a special knowledge of the mystery 


1 This is the idea of Resch, Der Paulinismus und die Logia Jesu, Leipzig, 
1904. St Paul, according to him, borrowed from an early Aramaic Gospel, 
which also served as a source to our three Synoptists. His book is full of 
interesting remarks, but his theory has had little success. 


44 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of man’s salvation, it is because he is conscious of being 
illumined by a supernatural light. This inward inspiration, 
which reveals to him sooner and more distinctly than to his 
colleagues the secret of the redeeming plans, is called by 
rationalistic writers, religious experience, or a conclusion 
reached by reasoning, but we call it by the name which he 
himself gives to it—a revelation. 


BOOK II 
PREPARATION FOR THE REDEMPTION 


45 





CHAPTER I 
HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 


I—PAULINE PSYCHOLOGY 


1. Biblical Foundation. 2, Hellenic Contributions. 3. The Human 
Composite. 4. Eclectic Language. 


ONTEMPORARY exegetes cannot be accused of 
having left St Paul’s psychology in the shade. 
Several of them have devoted to it valuable 
ymonographs. All assign to it a chosen place in 
the system of Pauline doctrine. But is there, in 
the strict sense of the word, any such thing as a psychology 
of St Paul? If no sacred book is a book of science, if the 
inspired writers have not received a commission to teach us 
the secrets of natural history or the elements of metaphysics, 
Paul would have been the last to endure being lowered to 
the level of those loquacious philosophers and pedlars of 
human wisdom, whom he was wont to pursue with his 
sarcasms. He never intended to construct a system of 
rational psychology. He employs the usual vocabulary—for 
he had to make himself understood, and he would not 
have hazarded his teaching by inventing new words—but 
he does not pride himself on the exclusiveness of his choice 
nor on the constancy of his selections. Any word is good 
enough for him, provided it perfectly translates his thought 
at the moment. His language becomes richer and is 
modified with age, with the countries through which he 
travels, and with the localities which he frequents. Individual 
in his ideas, he is eclectic in his expression, and this medley 
forms one of the most lifelike, picturesque, and agreeable 
styles imaginable; but every attempt to extract from it a 
coherent philosophic system is doomed in advance to certain 
failure. : 

To convince oneself that the psychological language of the 
Apostle is in substance that of the Septuagint, and that his 
conception of man is, above all, biblical, it is sufficient to 
consider the part he assigns to the heart in the drama of life. 
The heart is, in his opinion, as in that of the Old Testament 
writers, the centre of the whole emotional, intellectual, and 
moral life, the seat of all the affections and passions, re- 
membrance and remorse, joy and sorrow, holy resolutions 
and wicked desires, the channel of all the inspirations of the 
47 





48 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Holy Spirit, and the sanctuary of the conscience, on which 
are engraved in indelible characters the tables of the natural 
law, and into which no eye can penetrate, save that of God.? 
The truth enlightens it, infidelity blinds it, impenitence 
hardens it, hypocrisy perverts it, happiness dilates it, anguish 
contracts it, gratitude makes it exult.2 The heart is the 
measure of the man; in fact, the heart is the man himself, and 
that is why God, in order to appraise man at his just value, 
looks at his heart. 

Since the heart comprises almost all the phases of human 
activity, the role of the other organs is correspondingly re- 
duced. The liver, seat of anger and envy; the kidneys, the 
centre of the conscience; and.the spleen, the dwelling-place 
of sadness, are not even mentioned by St Paul.“ The eyes 
denote intelligence, and the ears attention rather by metaphor 
than by metonymy. The figure by virtue of which the 
bowels express tenderness or mercy, becomes almost softened 
down.* Nevertheless, the Apostle does revive an old word 
beloved by Homer and the ancient writers of tragedies— 
namely, the diaphragm (¢pyv)—the organ of sentiment and 
judgement—and he makes it appear in a dozen derivatives or 
compounds which are peculiar to him.® 

All the more remarkable, therefore, is the role which he 
assigns to the head. For the Hebrews, the head was only 
the emblem of superiority and pre-eminence. If the Greeks 


* Functions of the heart: affection (2 Cor. vii, 3; Phil. i, 7), consolation 
(Eph. vi, 22 ; Col. ii, 2 ; iv, 18 ; 2 Thess. ii, 17), peace (Col. iii, 15, cf. Phil. 
iv, 7), pain (Rom. ix, 2 ; 2 Cor. ii, 4), good desire (Rom. x, 1 ; 1 Thess. ii, 17), 
bad desire (Rom. i, 24), charity (1 Tim. i, 5), faith (Rom. vi, 17; x, 9-10), 
natural conscience (Rom. ii, 15: 7d €pyov roo vouou ypamnrdr ev rats Kapdlats 
avra@v) and supernatural (2 Cor. iii, 2-3: éyyeypappérn ev rais xapdias 
jpav, ev mragiv xapdias capxivas, cf. Rom. x, 8), habitation of the Holy 
Spirit (Rom. v, 5; 2 Cor. i, 22; Gal. iv, 6), and of Christ (Eph. iii, 17). 

* I!lumination (2 Cor. iv, 6: és EAappev ev rais wapSiats judv, Eph. i, 18: 
meputianévous Tovs 6p§aduods rhs Kapdias dudv), blindness (Rom. i, 21: 
€oxotio#yn, 2 Cor. iii, 15: xdAvppa emt rHv Kapdiav), dilatation (2 Cor. vi, II: 
7} Kapdia judy memAdruvrat), exultation (Eph. v, 19: ydAdovres, Col. iii, 16: 
gdovres), hardness (Eph. iv, 18 : mw&pwois, Rom. ii, 5: oxAnpérns, and 
Rom. ix, 18: oxAnpdvew). Pure heart (1 Tim. i, 53 2 iam. th 22) 
simple (Eph. vi, 5; Col. iii, 22), upright (cf. 2 Thess. iii, 5), innocent 
(cf. Rom. xvi, 18), circumcised (cf. Rom. ii, 29), mad (Rom. i, 21), hard 
and impenitent (Rom. ii, 5), cf. Heb. x, 22 (sincere) ; iii, 12 (bad). 

* God searcheth the hearts (Rom. viii, 27 : épavvdv), proveth our hearts 
(1 Thess. ii, 4: Soxipdfwv), closed to every other eye (1 Cor. xiv, 20: Tas 
KpunTa THs Kapdlas). 

‘ ‘Hap and omAjv are not found in the New Testament. ’Oodvs is 
employed once (Eph. vi, 11), but not as the seat of consciousness. 

* Lmhayxvileoda, “to be moved by compassion,” and 7a omAdyyva, 
“compassion, pity,’’ are employed without allusion to their concrete origin. 
St Paul says: omdAdyxva xal olxripuot (Phil. ii, 1), as he says: ordayxva 
otxripyod (Col. iii, 12). 

* Exclusively Pauline are: piv (1 Cor. xiv, 20), ¢pevandrys (Tit. i, 10), 
ppevanaray (Gal. vi, 3), dpdvnpa, vrepppoveiv, oddpwv, awdpdvws, owdpovilew, 
cwppovop.es, ouxppoovrn. 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 49 


made it the seat of thought, it is because they also made 
it the abode of the soul, an immaterial atom lying in wait at 
the portals of the senses to scrutinize the horizon and to 
direct the course, like the lookout on the topmast, or the 
pilot at the helm. But Paul, imbued with biblical ideas about. 
the unity of the human composite, could not liken the soul to 
the motor of Descartes or the guide of Plato. Hence he 
speaks of the functions of the head in the economy of life in 
terms which suggest an echo of modern biological doctrines. 

Let us not make him say, however, as a certain con- 
temporaneous exegete does, that the brain monopolizes all 
the sensorial impressions, in order to telegraph the com- 
mands of the soul in all directions; yet one is inevitably led 
to think that in his theory of the mystical body the relation 
of Christ to the Church must have given him an intuition of 
what the head is in its relation to the human composite, so 
much more decisive is his language than that of the other 
sacred writers. We have elsewhere pointed out this interest- 
ing and remarkable phenomenon. 


2. The influence exerted on Paul by Hellenic culture is not 
to be denied. It shows itself at first sight by the introduction 
of two words—conscience (cvveidnots) and reason (vots)— 
which are now so generally used that it is hardly conceivable 
that we could ever have got along without them. 

The word ‘‘ conscience’’ is of quite recent creation. No 
writer of the age of Pericles was yet acquainted with it. 
The first to employ it was the comedian Menander in the 
famous maxim: ‘‘ For every mortal conscience is a god.’’? 
Later, historians and philosophers vie with one another in 
its use, after having divested it of its old meaning of witness 
and accomplice, to make of it, according to the fine per- 
sonification of Philo, that incorruptible judge which sits in the 
depths of the soul, endeavouring by its counsels and threats 
to bring back those who have imprudently strayed away, and 
to subdue the proud and the rebellious. Not that the idea 


1 Fragment 654 (Didot, p. 103): Bpotots dracw % avveldnars Oeds. Variant 
(tb¢d. 597, p. 101): “Anaow quiv % avveldnois Geds.—Lvveidnois comes from 
avvoida, I know together with another ”’ (as an eye- or ear-witness, or as an 
accomplice) something concerning this other, or common to both. Thence, 
by a kind of reduplication’ of the “‘ me ”’—ovvoida éuavr@—‘‘ I can testify to 
myself, I am conscious of.’”” But this meaning, frequent among the classics, 
still had nothing to do with the moral conscience. The first time that 
ovveiSnois appears in the writings of a philosopher, the word does not 
signify the moral conscience, but the instinct of self-preservation, or rather the 
feeling of this instinct : [Ip@rov oixeiov elvar mdvre law THy avToo avoracw Kat 
tiv tadrns avveiSnow (Chrysippus, according to Diogenes Laertius, vii, 85). 

2 De mundi opif. (Mangey, vol. i, p. 30), cf. De posterit. Caini (vol. i, 

. 136); Quod Deus sit immut. (vol. i, p. 291). Philo—as also Josephus and 
iiacat inttesd of auveiSjois employs 7d ouvewds, ‘‘ that which is conscious 


He 4 


50 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of conscience is absent from the Bible, but the word itself 
was wanting there.!| What may surprise us is the fact that, 
when it was once found, the authors of the New Testament 
abandon the use of it almost exclusively to Paul. St Luke, 
who twice puts it in the mouth of the Apostle, makes no use 
of it himself, and it is found again only in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews and the First Epistle of Peter, so closely related to 
the style of Paul in ideas and vocabulary. According to 
Paul, conscience is an incorruptible law-giver, which formu- 
lates and promulgates the divine law, a truthful witness 
whose testimony cannot be challenged, an impartial judge 
whose verdict is beyond appeal. Sure of the value of this 
testimony and of this verdict, Paul appeals to his own con- 
science and to that of others.? But conscience is for him 
not only a tribunal where the past is inquired into and 
judged ; it is an inner light which warns man of his duties, 
and a faithful guide which imperiously points out his way.* 
Thus man ascends or descends the scale of moral perfection 
in proportion as his conscience is good, pure, and without 
reproach, or, on the contrary, bad, soiled, and seared; the 
middle course is that of weakness. Then it deserves in- 
dulgence and careful treatment.‘ 

The other word which Paul borrows from _ profane 
language is no less fortunate; for the biblical Adyos signify- 
ing the word and not reason (vovs), used so frequently in 
classical literature from Homer’s time, had no exact equiva- 
lent in the Bible. The vots is not only the intellect and the 


in us and testifies to ourselves.”” Diodorus of Sicily, Dionysius of Halicar 
nassus, Lucian and Epictetus have ovveidnois, the latter in a sense which 
resembles the modern usage closely. 

1 For the idea, compare Job ix, 21 ; 2 Sam. xviii, 13, etc. The word DJ) 


(Eccl. x, 20), translated by ovveiSnois, is rather thought than conscience 
(Vulgate, 7% cogttatione tua). 

* 2 Cor. i, 12 (7d papripiov rijs ovverdijoews Hudv); iv, 2 (cvnordvovres 
€avrovs mpos macav oauvetdnowv avOpwrwv); ¢f. v, 11.—In Rom. ix, I 
(dAjnGerav Ady ev Xprors, ov evsouat, cvupaprupovons pot THs auverdHjoews pov), 
the testimony of Paul’s conscience ts added (cvv) to his express affirmation 
(od yevdSouat)—In Rom. ii, 15 (ovppaprupovons avirdv ras cuverdjcews) 
the testimony of the conscience of the pagans observing the natural law 
confirms (cvv) the moral goodness of their act. 

* It is a mistake to claim that in St Paul conscience is merely consequent ; 
it is antecedent in all the cases where the Apostle orders a thing to be done or 
not to be done, Sia rHv ouveiSnow, Rom. xiii, §: obligation to obey the 
constituted authorities 2% consczence ; 1 Cor. x, 25, 27, 28, 29.—Moreover, 
the conscience that judges the actions of others (2 Cor. iv, 2; v, 11; ¢f. 
1 Cor. x, 29) supposes a criterion capable of discerning the objective goodness 
and malice of acts, and this criterion belongs to the antecedent conscience, 
since everyone can apply it to future actions. 

“ r Tim. i, 5, 19 (aya6#) ; 1 Tim. iii, 9 ; 2 Tim. i, 3 («afapa) ; 1 Tim. iv, 2 
(kexavrnptacuevn). It is curious that St Luke, relating the discourses of 
Paul, uses the word ovveiSnais, unknown to his own vocabulary, and follows 
it with the same epithets as Paul, Acts xxiii, 1 (a4ya0q) ; xxiv, 16 (dapdoxomos 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 51 


reason, but also the mode of thinking, opinion, sentiment.} 
A born auxiliary of the conscience, with which it sometimes 
seems to be confounded, the natural law is within its province, 
but the supernatural is outside of its sphere, and the mysteries 
of faith are beyond it. Unless it is assisted and renewed by 
the wvevpya, it will be vain, corrupt, and reprobate. Power- 
less against the flesh, it can itself become carnal; and Paul, 
always original, even in his selections from others, offers us 
some strange combinations of words, such as ‘‘ the spirit of 
reason ’’ and ‘‘ the reason of the flesh,’’ which make us com- 
prehend the impossibility of applying to him the standard of 
the classical vocabulary. 

St Paul also seized upon that fine expression of Plato, the 
inward man,” probably without knowing the origin of it, and 
giving it the outward man as a pendant; but this contrast is 
used too sporadically, and is too elementary a philosophy 
to be the pivot of the whole Pauline psychology, as some 
modern exegetes maintain. In the passage in the Epistle to 
the Romans, where he affirms that he is delighted with the 
Law of God according to the inward man,* the Apostle 
clearly identifies this inward man with the reason, for he 
adds: ‘‘ With the mind I serve the Law of God, but with the’ 
flesh the law of sin.’’ The vots is not to be confounded with | 
the aveiu.; the latter, entering the lists against the flesh, 
would come out of the struggle victorious, while the vots is. 
invariably conquered. The antithesis flesh and inward man— 
or, what amounts to the same thing, flesh and reason—is 
therefore formed here of incongruous elements, the inward 
man designating the intellectual nature, which is the very | 
essence of the man, and the flesh being his sinful nature, | 
whose present fall presupposes necessarily a primitive state 
of elevation. But when the Apostle enjoins the Ephesians to 
be ‘‘ strengthened by his (God’s) Spirit with might unto the 
inward man,’’ and when he writes to the Corinthians : 


| ce eC a aie nL ee ne 


—The weak or the sickly conscience, 1 Cor. viii, 7-10 (doBevys) ; 1 Cor. viii, 12 
(dofevoica) can mean easily soiled (uoAvverat, 1 Cor. vill, 7). Compare 
the peulavrat (Tit. i, 15) of the Pastorals. 

* Outside of Luke xxiv, 45 ; Apoc. xiii, 18 ; Xvil, 9, the word vods is found 
only in St Paul, who employs it twenty-one times. Among the derivatives 
or compounds of vois, the following seven belong to him exclusively : 
vonpa, evvoa, vovberéw, vovbeaia, mpovoéw, mpdvota, vmdvota, including the 
discourses of the Acts. 

* Plato says (Republ., ix, 5894): Too avOpdmou 6 évrés dvOpwmos éorat 
€yxparéararos.—Plotinus, who expressly attributes the expression to Plato 
(Znnead., v, 1, 10: Olov Aéyer TAdrwv tov elow avOpwrov), calls the znward 
man the true man (Zznead.,i, 1,10) and opposes it to the body. So Philo, 
De Plantat. (Mangey, vol. i, p. 336). 

* Rom. vii, 22: ovvpSouat 7H voum tod @eod xara tov tow avOpwrov. 
Three verses later (vii, 25), the zmward man is identified with -the vots : 
“Apa obv adrés eyd 7H vot Sovledw vduw @eod. It is evident that it is a 
question of a vos which the flesh dominates. 


sinenrooe 


52 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


‘‘ Though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward 
man is renewed day by day,’’! the inward man is no longer 
merely the soul or the reason, it is the intellectual nature 
enriched by the gifts of grace, the soul inhabited by the Holy 
Spirit, and in possession of the wvevya. 

To sum up: The outward man is dependent on the physical 
order; the inward man belongs either to the physical order 
or to the moral and religious order.—The inward man and 
the outward man would exist in the state of nature, as they 
exist in the state of supernatural elevation; but, while the 
notion of the outward man remains invariable in both cases ; 
the comprehension of the inward man differs.—Thus the in- 
ward man is not simply the invisible and immaterial part of 
the human composite, it is also what grace effects within us. 
Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the inward man is 
strengthened and renewed; left to himself, he is powerless 
against the flesh and becomes carnal. 


3. The flesh or body constitutes the outward man; the 


“soul, the mind, the heart, the reason, and conscience are 


ann, 


different aspects or appellations of the inward man. Strictly 
speaking, the body and the flesh are not synonyms. The body 
is the organized matter, living or dead, of men and animals. 


' The flesh is the body minus the idea of organism, with, in 


| addition, the idea of life.* The flesh, therefore, abstracts from 


the homogeneity of the parts which the notion of the body 
excludes, and it presupposes the vital principle abstracted by 
the body. With a few exceptions, Paul always attaches to 
the body the idea of an organism and of a human organism < 
we know with what felicity of expression he thus designates 
the Church, the organic complement of the Saviour and an 
integral part of the mystical Christ. Nevertheless, a 


‘synonymy between the body and the flesh exists for him 


-to a considerable degree. When he says of himself that 


he is ‘‘ absent in the body but present in spirit ’’ (1 Cor. v, 3) 
or ‘‘ absent in the flesh but present in the spirit ’’; when he 
wishes that the virgin should be holy ‘‘ both in body and in 
spirit,’? and that all the faithful should avoid the contamina- 
tions ‘‘of the flesh and the spirit ’’; when he desires that 


1 Eph. iii, 16: xparatwOjvat ud rod [Ivevparos adrob eis tov €ow avdpwmov. 
Since the Holy Spirit intervenes, the zmward man, submissive to its 
influence, is the sfzrztua/ man and not the natural man.—2 Cor iv, 16: ef kal 
6 éw tpdv dvOpwros Siadbelperat, GAN 6 ow Hudv dvaxawoivrar juepa Kat 
tuepg. The contrast here is not between odp£ and mvedua, but between oda 
and mvedya, or rather between the oda considered independently, and the 
vois renewed by the mvedua. Cf. Eph. iv, 23. 

2 Flesh, destined to serve as nourishment, food, is called xpéas (Rom. 
xiv, 21 ; 1 Cor. viii, 13). 

2 1 Cor. xv, 37-40 (the body of plants and stars); Col. ii, 17 (4 éorw ona 
T&v pedAdvrwv, 76 8€ cGya Tod Xpiotod; this is the shadow [the figure or 
type] of things to come, but the body [the truth or the realization] is of Christ 
[belongs to him, concerns him]). 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 53 


“‘the life of Jesus may appear in our bodies’’ or ‘in our 
fnortal flesh ’’ ; and when he urges the Christian husband to 
‘‘love his wife as his own body, for no man ever hated his 
own flesh,’’ it is difficult to discover any difference in mean- 
ing between these two terms, for they can be almost always 
interchanged,' except in the case of some restrictions imposed 
by biblical usage, as, for example, the mention of the flesh 
instead of the body whenever reference is made to cir- 
cumcision.* But when the flesh is put into relation with the 
soul or spirit, it acquires, by reason of this connection, 
several new meanings of considerable complexity. 

The words soul and spirit had in Hebrew, as in Greek and 
Latin, similar careers, and followed an analogous course in 
their semantic evolution. From the etymological meaning of 
““breath, air in motion,’’ they came to signify by turns 
‘‘ breathing,’’ the sign and condition of life, then ‘‘ life’ it- 
self, then ‘the vital principle,’’ and, finally, ‘‘a living 
substance ’’ distinct from matter and superior to it. But 
while by usage the spirit freed itself more and more from 
matter, the soul, by a reverse process, tended to identify 
itself with the vital principle of animate beings. Neverthe- 
less, among biblical writers, their general synonymy results 
from this triple law: first, that they correspond to each 
other very frequently in parallel phrases; secondly, that they 
are interchanged freely in the same phrase; and thirdly, that 
they receive almost without distinction the same attributes. 
If some have thought they had discovered that neither joy, 
nor fear, nor hope were ever attributed to the spirit, while 
sensuous desires and appetites were always referred to the 
soul,* these are perhaps accidental facts, the significance of 
which must not be exaggerated. 

Paul, being accustomed to concentrate all the manifesta- 
tions of life in the heart and to borrow from the classical 


* Compare together the following four pairs of expressions : 1 Cor. v, 3 
with Col. i, § (arwv 7@ odpart, mapwv S€ 7H mvevpare and 7H capKt dreyu, 
add TH mvedvpate odvv byiv eur); 1 Cor. vii, 34 with 2 Cor. vii, 1: (dyla Kal 
TH ompare Kai TH mvedpatt and Kxabapiowpev eavtods amd mavtTos podvapod 
oapKos Kat mvevuatos); 2 Cor. iv, 10 with iv, 11 (iva Kal 9 Cw rod 
*Inood €v TH odpate Huadv davepwOF and tva cal 4 Cw tot "Inoot davepwhF 
ev 7H OvntH capKi judv); Eph. v, 28 with v, 29 (ws ra éavrdv odpara and 
ovdeis yap mote THY EavTod odpKa epionoer). 

* In the primitive institution of circumcision (Gen. xvii 9-14) the word flesh 
is constantly employed. The association of ideas recalls this word in 
reference to the circumcision, Rom. ii, 28 ; Gal. vi, 13 ; Eph. ii, 11, etc. 

$ In classic Latin spzvttus and anima retained to the end the whole series 
of the meanings indicated, while amnzmus was specially restricted to the 
intelligent soul.—JJvedpa and MM) likewise kept all their successive meanings, 


and in Ecclesiastes are applied even to the souls of beasts. On the contrary, 
yux7y lost its etymological sense of “‘ breath’ and its derivative meaning of 
“breathing,” a meaning which &/5) yielded to NiDW). 


See Hatch, Zssays in Biblical Greek, Oxford, 1889, pp. 94-130. 


54 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


vocabulary new terms for the operations of the intellect, very 
rarely calls the soul or the spirit the thinking principle. 
According to Genesis, God, breathing into man’s nostrils the 
breath of life, made of him a “‘ living soul ’’—that is to say, 
a soul exercising vital functions in and by the flesh. Thence- 
forth, the flesh is not conceived without the soul, and the 
soul is not defined without some relation to the flesh. The 
flesh is the.substratum of the soul, and the soul is the life of 
the flesh. When Paul thanks Epaphroditus for having 
*“‘delivered’’ his soul for love of him, when he praises 
Prisca and Aquila for having risked their heads to save 
his soul, and when he assures the Thessalonians that he 
would have liked to give them not only the Gospel, but his 
soul, as a mother lavishes it upon her babes, it is clear that 
he is speaking of life.* Also a great number of psychic 
phenomena are assigned without distinction to the flesh or 
to the soul, because the soul, considered as the vital principle, 
is not adequately distinguished from the flesh. ‘‘ Every 
soul’’ and ‘‘ all flesh’’ are two equivalent expressions. ? 

Unless led to it by a wish for symmetry or by the desire 
to accentuate a contrast, Paul seems also to avoid naming 
spirit, the intelligent part of man. But when, by excep- 
tion, the spirit designates the thinking substance,® there is 
between the soul and it a modal difference, which allows him 
to say without tautology: ‘‘ May the God of peace sanctify 
you in all things, that your whole spirit and soul and body 
may be preserved blameless.’’* ‘The body or the material 
substratum, the soul or the sentient life, the spirit or the in- 
tellectual life, are three aspects of man which comprise his 
entire being and all his activities; they are not three distinct 
parts of the human composite. To look for Plato’s tri- 


? Phil. ii, 30 ; Rom. xvi, 4; 1 Thess. ii, 8. So too Cnrotow Thy yvyny pov 
Rom. xi, 3), but it is a quotation from 1 Kings xix, ro. 

* 1 Cor. i, 29 ; Rom. iii, 20 ; Gal. ii, 16 (mdca odpé, but the last two examples 
are quotations). Rom. ii, 9; xiii, 1 (méca Puy). 

* 1 Cor. ii, 11, etc. See note, p. 144. 

‘ 1 Thess. v, 23: OAdKAnpov tudv 76 mredpa Kal 4 uy} Kal 76 capa 
dpéuntws év 7H mapovoig tod Kupiov tyudv *I. X. rnpnfein. See E. von Dob- 
schiitz, Meyer’s Kommentar’, Gottingen, 1909: Exkurs zur Trichotomie, 
pp. 230-232. The author shows that trichotomy is not biblical, that it is foreign 
to Josephus and to Philo and even to the Greek philosophers, Plato and 
Aristotle, and that it is derived from the Neo-Platonists, from whom it passed 
to the Gnostics (St Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., I, vii, 5), to the Montanists (Origen, 
Pert Archon, IV, viii, 11), and to Apollinaris of Laodicea (/ragm. 88 in 
Lietzmann, i, 226). He, like Chrysostom, Theodoret, Ambrosiaster, an 
anonymous writer (in Cramer, Catena, p. 374), Pelagius and St Ambrose 
({m Luc., vii, 190) believes that St Paul means here by zvedyua “ the new 
element of life which comes into the Christians ”’; but the enumeration (ro 
mvedpa Kal 7 wux7 Kal 70 cpa) seems to prove that it is a question here of 
grandeurs of the same order, and the adverb duéunrws could be with difficulty 
applied to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit within us. Moreover, 
it is certain that St Paul sometimes employs mvedpa as a synonym of rods. 





HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 55 


chotomy in these words is to lose sight of the fact that the 
Apostle’s anthropology rests, as is well known, upon the 
scriptural conception, and that it cannot be admitted, without 
the most extreme unlikelihood, that he departs from that 
conception only once, in a casual phrase, in favour of a 
System incompatible with Jewish theology. Bae 

By his soul man has an affinity with the higher powers ; by 
his flesh he stands in contrast to pure spirits: ‘ My spirit, 
saith the Lord, shall not remain in man for ever, because he 
is flesh.”’"? The Old Testament furnishes us with numerous 
examples of this antithesis: 


The Egyptian is man and not God: 
His horses are flesh and not spirit.? 


Whether the antithesis is pronounced or hidden, it usually 
ascribes to the flesh an additional idea of weakness, im- 
potence, wretchedness, and decline. Whatever is transitory, 
perishable, and terrestrial takes the name of flesh, and what- 
ever is eternal, incorruptible, and celestial enters into the 
category of spirit.? In this sense the term flesh is often re- 
placed by flesh and blood. We have to contend not against 
flesh and blood, but against the spirits of wickedness in the 
high places.’’4 aan. 

To this order of ideas is allied an expression, the analysis 
of which is somewhat difficult. The Jews usually said of 
their relatives : ‘‘ He is my flesh’ or ‘‘ my flesh and bones.” 
Paul designates® in the same way a community of Origin and 
relations of kinship. In this we might see a simple physical 
contrast between the flesh transmitted by generation and 
common to the members of one family and the soul which 
comes from God. It is thus, in fact, that the Epistle to the 
Hebrews® regards it. But Paul unites the flesh and the soul | 
too closely to distinguish the father of the soul from the 
father of the flesh. Between the children cf the flesh and the | 
children of God, between Israel according to the flesh and) 
the Israel of God, between Ishmael born according to the | 
flesh and Isaac born according to the spirit, and between 
Christ, the son of David, according to the flesh, and Son of 
God according to the spirit of sanctity,7 the opposition is 
always ontological; it occurs between complete substances, 
and not between the component parts of one and the same 
substance. - 


4. We see what a disparity of elements, what a variety 
of influences, and what a complexity of combinations the 


eVGrens ¥i,7) posh xxx 133 

1 Cor. ix, 11 (ra capxixa, temporal goods); Rom. xv, 27. 

Eph. vi, 12 ; ¢f. Gal. i, 16; 1 Cor. xv, 50; Heb. ii, 14. 

Rom: ix,'3 ) xivrd, ® Heb. xii, 9. 

Rom. ix, 8; 1 Cor. x, 18 and Gal. vi, 16 , Gal. iv, 29 ; Rom. i, 3-4. 


auc » © 


56 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


anthropology of St Paul presents. We are tempted to apply 
to it what has been said of Philo: ‘‘ He uses different terms 
to express the same phenomena and the same terms to 
designate different phenomena. He borrows his vocabulary 
sometimes from one philosophy, sometimes from another, 
and most frequently from the Bible itself.’ But the 
eclecticism of the two writers has very different motives: 
Philo, desirous of proving that nothing beautiful and true is 
absent from the Bible, allows himself to be carried away by 
his naturally fluctuating mind in the wake of all systems; 
Paul puts himself above all systems and blends their dis- 
similar products into a very personal form of teaching, which 
touches by its ramifications almost all the essential points of 
his theology. His heterogeneous vocabulary causes verbal 
collisions and shocks of ideas, which produce effects as 
singular as they are unforeseen; and what brings the diff- 
culty of his style to a climax is his playful use of antitheses 
and the employment of terms opposed to and reacting upon 
one another; as well as his habit of gliding imperceptibly 
over the shades of meaning in the same word to the point of 
running through the whole gamut of them in the same con- 
text. But, in the main, his conception of the human com- 
posite is constantly inspired by biblical language. From this 
there results a very intimate union between the soul and the 
body, by virtue of which all the activity of man can be re- 
ferred to the heart, the focus of life. The celebrated defini- 
tion: ‘‘ An intelligence served by organs,’’ would not have 
suited Paul’s taste. In order to grasp his thought, we must 
put aside the dualism of Plato, Descartes, and Kant. If he 
casually compares our body to a garment or a tent, this 
isolated figure of speech is of no importance.’ No more than 
Philo, who paints the unity of the human composite in the 
most realistic colours, and also represents the body occa- 
sionally as the dwelling, the sanctuary, or even the prison 
and the tomb of the soul,? does Paul divide man’s single 
self into two parts; if he subordinates the body to the soul, 
as is just, he does not take it away from the personality. 

The appearance of sin, also described conformably to 
biblical data, causes a moral disturbance which destroys the 

1 2Cor.v,1-4. See pp. 367-9. 

* Philo usually defines man as ‘‘ a composite, a mixture, a tissue of soul 
and body.” (De ebriet., 26, Mangey, vol. i, p. 372: To puKis Kat odparos 
Sfacpa } wAeypa } Kpaua  S te more yp Karey ravri 76 avvOerov Ldov). 
Nevertheless, outside of the comparisons indicated, he sometimes divides the 
soul into two parts (Quts rerum divin. heres, 11, vol. i, p. 480 (8txds) ; De 
migrat. Abrah., i, vol. i, p. 436; De agric., 7, vol. i, p. 304); into three parts 
(Leg. alleg.,i, 22; iii, 38, vol. i, pp. §7 and 110; Deconfus. linguar., 7, vol. i, 
p. 408 : tpiueptis), or even into stx parts (Qurs rerum divin. heres, 45, vol. i, 
p. 504). These variations, which do not prevent his psychology from resting 
on the Bible, show us how easily a Jew could accommodate himself to the 
erminology of different schools of philosophy. 





HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 57 


equilibrium of our faculties. Man, who was flesh both be- 
cause he is animated matter and because he is not pure spirit, 
becomes flesh by a new right because sin dwells within him. 
Henceforth there is a conflict and a discord in his whole 
being. To re-establish the interrupted harmony, the active 
intervention of the Holy Spirit is necessary, whose presence 
brings him qualities, functions, and relations—in a word, 
a new nature which itself takes the name of spirit. Before 
entering into this special sphere, we must study the origin, 
invasion, and domination of sin. 


IJ—Tue REIGN or SIN 


1. Origin of Sin. 2. Extension of Sin. 3. The Empire of Satan. 
4. Elemental Spirits. 


1. The corruption of the human race, a commonplace of 
Jewish theology, had not failed to impress the pagans them- 
selves. We know how the first three chapters of the Epistle 
to the Romans develop this thesis: ‘‘ All have sinned and 
do need the glory of God. . . . Both Jews and Greeks are 
all under [the yoke of] sin.’’? The Apostle states the fact, 
without proving it otherwise than by an appeal to experience, 
which is confirmed, especially for the Jews, by the testimony 
of Scripture. The twofold purpose which he pursues is to 
show that there is no salvation outside the Gospel,* and that 
the Jews, in spite of their disputable prerogatives, do not 
possess, in the face of sin and supernatural justice, any 
advantage over the Gentiles, who are the object of their 
disdain. ‘* 

A general phenomenon must be traceable to the same 
cause, and it might be supposed that the Apostle, after 
having described the overflow of evil, would indicate its 
common source. But two subsidiary ideas draw him else- 
where : he is eager to conclude that the Gospel promises and 
gives what the Law made men hope for in vain ;° and he does 
not wish to leave the reader under the impression that the 
salvation brought by the Gospel is in contradiction to the 
Law.® So, when he comes to the origin of sin, he does not 
put it into direct relation with the moral corruption, the 
gloomy picture of which he has just drawn; he is satisfied 
with drawing a parallel between it and the origin of justice, 
which it makes clearer by analogy.” This is to go from the 


1 For the Jews, see Weber, Jtidische Theol.?, pp. 233-239; for the pagans, 
compare not the satirists, suspected of exaggeration, but the moralists and 
philosophers, like Seneca, Zpzst., xcv (general picture of pagan morals) ; 
De benefictis,i, 10; De tra, ii, 7 and 8, etc. a 

2 Rom. iii, 23 and iii, 9. *6Rom,- 1, 20; 

“ Rom. ii, 1, 25 ; iil, 9, 27. 5 Rom. ill, 21-26. 

® Rom. iii, 13 and the whole of chap. v. 7 Rom. vy, 12-21. 


58 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


more known to the less known, and to proceed according to 
the rules of logic. No Jew, and indeed no proselyte, could 
be ignorant of the history of the creation and of man’s fall, 
and it cannot be doubted that this history formed part of the 
elementary doctrines taught to every catechumen who came 
from the ranks of the Gentiles. 

Now from the narrative in Genesis it is clear that Adam’s 
disobedience brought upon the human race death, the enmity 
of God, and a share of misfortunes, of which the most 
humiliating is the rebellion of the senses. Composed of 
perishable elements, man found in the tree of life an antidote 
to his inborn corruptibility ; it is sin which banished him from 
his earthly paradise and caused the fatal sentence of death 
to be passed upon him and his race. Then instead of the 
divine intimacy and gracious favours with which he had been 
blessed, he sees fall upon him one calamity after another: 
the infertility of the soil, the hard necessity of work and 
remote banishment from the face of God. Created in recti- 
tude and innocence, Adam and Eve did not carry within 
them the germs of moral perversity; the incitement to evil 
had to reach them from without; but sin destroyed at once 
the harmony of their faculties, took away from them their 
domination over inferior powers, and with the sentiment of 
shame was born within them concupiscence. Without 
speculating much about these three scriptural statements, 
every sensible reader will conclude that a common penalty 
implies a common offence, that the loss of the divine friend- 
ship presupposes a previous state of favour and grace, that 
in order to bring down on all his descendants a sentence of 
condemnation, Adam must have represented them by virtue 
of a right which the mere quality of being the first man did 
not confer upon him, and that there was, therefore, in God’s 
designs, between Adam and his race a union of solidarity, 
very unlike our modern ideas of extreme individuality, but 
very congenial to the ancient mode of thinking. Hence the 
dogma of the original fall of man could not cause any em- 
barrassment to the contemporaries of Paul, since they un- 
hesitatingly admitted, on the testimony of the Scriptures, 
that the result of the disobedience of Adam has been for us 
‘death, a tendency to evil, and the sad conditions of humanity 
to-day. The childish fables, subsequently added to the 
biblical foundation by the editors of the Talmud, did not 
alter the essence of the dogma. 

Paul does not, therefore, intend to demonstrate the fact of 
the original fall; he takes it for granted as being known, just 
as he does the relation of solidarity, without which the 
original fall would be unintelligible: but he makes use of 
both ideas to explain the work of restoration. In fact, the 
reversibility of demerits in the person of Adam makes clear 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 59 


the reversibility of merits in the person of Christ, provided 
that the first truth is above all dispute, and that there exists 
between Adam and Christ a relation easily admissible. This 
being established, the teaching of the Apostle may be summed 
up thus: Sin originates from Adam; death originates from 
sin. 

Sin originates from Adam. ‘‘ By one man sin entered into 
the world.’’? This man is evidently our first father; sin is 
the power of evil which Jesus Christ will come to destroy ; 
‘the world ’’ indicates the human race, and the entry of sin 
is not an isolated and transitory apparition, but a triumphant 
invasion. Sin is not propagated merely by imitation and by 
the contagion of example; it is transmitted by heredity. 
‘* By the disobedience of one man many (of roAAo/, whatever 
their number) were made sinners.’’ There is only one 
fault committed, and, nevertheless, there are many con- 
demned, many guilty, many sinners; the fault of one, there- 
fore, was common to all. 

Death originates from sin. ‘‘ Death passed upon all men, 
because all had sinned.’’? It is not a question here of 
personal sins, but of one single sin common to all. Indeed, 
if the Apostle were speaking of actual sins, he would assign 
to death a different origin from that which he assigned at the 
beginning of the phrase. He would assign to it an origin 
notoriously false, since it is certain that all men die, yet that 
all men are not guilty of actual sins. He would assign to it 
a cause refuted by himself, for he adds immediately that ‘‘ sin 
was not imputed ’’ as worthy of death, ‘‘ for want of a law ”’ 
pronouncing against it the penalty of death, and that, never- 
theless, ‘‘ death had reigned even over those who had not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression’’; in 
other words, ‘‘ who were not guilty of actual sins.’’ Hence 
the best commentators, both Protestants and rationalists, 
when they are working. as exegetes, not as theologians, 
adopt our explanation, however contrary it may be to their 
prejudices and their systems, because it seems to be the only 


rational one and the sole explanation in harmony with the 


evident intention of the Apostle. 

The transmission of the original sin has its pendant in the 
diffusion of the justice of Christ. It is necessary to hold fast 
to this analogy. As the deprivation of original grace is 
accomplished in law and principle by the disobedience of 
Adam, acting in the name and to the detriment of all his 
posterity, and as it awaits for its diffusion only our actual 
entrance into the human family through natural generation, 
so the merit gained by Jesus Christ, acting in the name and 
for the benefit of humanity of which he is the representative, 


? Rom. v,12. See Vol IJ, pp. 213-4. 
2 On this text see Vol. I, pp. 215-6. 


60 THE" THEOLOGY OR Sigrpaul 


is acquired for us in law and principle once for all and awaits 
for its communication only our actual union with Christ our 
Redeemer by faith and baptism. If there still always remains 
something mysterious in this solidarity of merit and demerit, 
the mystery is the same on both sides; but the explanation of 
it is not the province of biblical theology. 


2. Once having entered into the world and being firmly 
established in the centre of things, sin reigns there like a 
despot. The empire of evil increases and spreads more and 
more. The corruption of the heart gains possession of the 
mind and the perversion of the mind accelerates that of 
morals. In this way, in the-opinion of St Paul, is explained 
the progress of idolatry and the inundation of vice. The 
divine being, perceived through the veil of creation and in 
the depths of the conscience, imposed on man three duties: 
to seek God who was apprehended imperfectly by reason, to 
honour him after having found him, and to thank him for his 
benefits in order to render him propitious. Far from that, 
the pagans, led astray by their depraved instincts, despised 
the happiness of knowing God, fettered the truth in order not 
to hear its urgent voice, basely offered divine honours to the 
most abject creatures, and carried their depravity to the 
point of taking delight in lies and malice. Consequently, the 
penalty of retaliation fell upon them, terrible and inexorable. 
First, their reason became darkened and their thoughts vain; 
they were the sport of illusions and sophisms, and their mad- 
ness became the more incurable, the more they plumed them- 
selves on their wisdom. The blindness of their intellect, 
added to the hardness of their heart, soon gave them over 
to impure passions; they abandoned themselves to vileness, 
and unintentionally made themselves the executors of divine 
vengeance.* Finally, as they had abandoned God, God 
abandoned them to their reprobate sense; they were “‘ full 
of inquity, wickedness, fornication, avarice, malice, envy, 
murder, contention, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, detractors, 
contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, dis- 
obedient to parents; foolish, dissolute, without affection, 
without mercy.’’? 

This picture has often been compared with that which the 
author of the Book of Wisdom draws.* If there is here no 
literary dependence of Paul’s description on the latter in the 
true sense of the word, and even no intentional imitation, it 
is dificult not to see in it at least a reminiscence. The 
absurdity of polytheism and the laxity of the pagans 
universally offended the moral sense of the Jews. What 


? Rom. i, 18-28. * Rom. i, 29-31. 
° Wisd. xiii, 1-17 and xiv, 11-27. See this parallel in Sanday, Remans, 
PP. 51-52, or in the dissertation of Grafe (cf. Vol. I, p. 16, note). 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 61 


distinguishes Paul from his compatriots is that, while con- 
demning with great energy the vices of the Gentiles, he 
sympathizes with them as individuals, that he founds their 
guilt on the violation of natural morality, instead of attribut- 
ing it to their ignorance of the Law, and that he explains 
the progress of idolatry and profligacy by a sort of psycho- 
logical process, serving at the same time as punishment and 
remedy, and causing good to come out of the very excess 
of evil. 

It has been asserted that, unfaithful to his own maxims, 
he does not connect the general corruption of humanity with 
the original fall. But what, then, does this statement mean? 
‘‘ We also walked in time past in the desires of our flesh, ful- 
filling the will of the flesh and of our [bad] thoughts, and 
were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.’’* In 
whatever way we understand them, the words: ‘* We were 


- Epos nucda téxva diac dpyys ws Kal of Aowrol. Haupt (Meyer's 
Kommentar’) thinks that the verb jpye0a has eis mavres (verse 2) for subject 
and includes all Christians ; but then of Aowzoé designates the non-Christians, 
and the state of sin is affirmed definitely of all men, as in the other explana- 
tion. The exegesis adopted by St Augustine in numerous passages (Retract., 
I, x, 3; xv, 6, etc.) has been followed by several commentators ancient and 
modern, St Thomas, Estius (ex zpsa mativitatis origine, qua naturam a 
parentibus accipimus), Bisping (durch unsere natiirliche Geburt), etc. But 
the majority of the commentators since St Chrysostom. (mdvres mparropev 
déia épyfs), have seen that it could not be a question here, at Jeast directly, 
of original sin; for (2) Hramus natura filit trae is explained by what im- 
mediately precedes: ef nos omnes aliguando conversati sumus tn destdertis 
carnis nostrae, and nothing indicates that there is a priority of time in jye8a 
in relation to dveorpddnuev, besides the fact that it is not clear what a men- 
tion of original sin has to do here.-—(4) The Apostle contrasts the past with the 
present, the unhappy condition of the Jews 2 time past and the blessed state 
of those same Jews ow ; indeed, from the point of view of original sin, the 
condition of the converted Jews is the same in both cases : in time past they 
were born with original sin which circumcision (or any other remedium 
naturae) effaced, and now they are born with the same original sin, which 
baptism effaces.—(c) The evident aim of Paul is to show that the Jews were 
in time past (}ue0a) on the same footing as the Gentiles (ws kal ot Aotrol) 
in regard to sin and to the divine wrath, and that they, as well as the Gentiles, 
are now in an entirely different state through the simple effect of God’s mercy 
(ii, 4: Deus autem, gui dives est in mtsericordia, propler nimiam chartitatem 
suam, qua dilexit nos, etc.). The word which forms the antithesis to maturae 
is not therefore, as elsewhere, the Law (cf. Rom. ii, 14), nor theocratic adop- 
tion (Gal. ii, 15; Rom. xi, 24), nor teaching (1 Cor. xi, 14), in fine, nothing 
that distinguished the Jews from other nations and raised them above 
those nations, but only the mercy and grace of the present system. The 
Jews, like the Gentiles, were by nature (fvce.), through the evil inclinations 
inherited from their first father, sinners and addicted to vice ; but now, like the 
converted pagans, they are by grace (éhéev: ii, 4; xdpere, il, 5; cf. li, 8) made 
alive, raised from the dead (ii, 5-6), and created in Christ Jesus for good works 
(ii, 10).—The existence of original sin is not, therefore, directly stated here, 
but it is presupposed ; and the word dvce cannot be explained without this 
supposition. In fact, it cannot signify wholly (omnino, mavrws), as some 
commentators have thought, and everyone agrees that the exegesis of 
Ambrosiaster is inadmissible (Vatura cum mala voluntas supponttur fit 
natura trae). 


62 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


by nature children of wrath, like the rest,’’ include neces- 
sarily all men without exception. Indeed, if ‘‘ we’’ denotes 
the Jews, according to the common explanation, ‘‘ the rest ”’ 
are the non-Jews—that is, all the Gentiles; and if ‘‘ we’’ 
denotes the Christians, as certain commentators desire to 
prove, ‘‘ the rest’’ would be the non-Christians—that is, all 
unbelievers, whether Jews or Gentiles. In both cases the 
affirmation is universal. On the other hand, following 
biblical analogy, the ‘ children of wrath”? are men worthy 
of divine wrath and exposed to the punishments inflicted by 
this retributive anger. The only question, therefore, is to 
determine the meaning of the word “ naturally’ or ‘* by 
nature ’’ (¢vae). As those dispositions which we bring with 
us at birth are called natural, whether we derive them from 
heredity or from any other cause, St Augustine thought we 
were ‘children of wrath by nature,’’ as men are blind from 
birth, or racially negroes, because sin, without belonging to 
the essential constitution of our being, is hereditary in us. 
Calvin, while adopting this exegesis, as usual exaggerates 
the thought of Augustine; he wishes to prove that we are 
born with sin, as the serpent with its poison. Many Pro- 
testant theologians go so far as to pretend that original sin 
is inherent in our nature. The Apostle does not say that. 
He points out very clearly what it is that makes us “* children 
of wrath’? ; it is to obey ‘‘ the desires and will of the fleshy 
it is, in other words, to commit actual sin. When he adds 
that we are so ‘‘ by nature,”’ the meaning of this word must 
be determined by the latent contrast which it implies. Now 
the only contrast suggested here by the context is that of 
grace: by grace we are just, holy, and sons of God; by 
nature we are sinners and sons of wrath—that is to say, 
evidently by nature left to itself and without the intervention 
of grace. If, then, original sin is not named heres iteare 
sufficiently indicated as the universal source of the evil 
inclinations with which our nature is now tainted. 


3. We come thus to trace the genealogy of evil. The reign 
of sin is explained by the abuse of human liberty, and the 
abuse of liberty is closely related to the corruption of man’s 
nature and to the dominion of the flesh; and natural corrup- 
tion is derived from Adam’s disobedience ; but it is necessary 
to go back still further. According to St Paul and St John, 
both of them inspired by the story of Genesis and the Book 
of Wisdom, the first instigator of sin was the devil, who, in 
the form of a serpent, seduced Eve and, through Eve, our 
first father, and, a murderer from the beginning, still 
pursues continually his deadly work.! He it is that creates 


* Gen. iii, 1-4 (6 d¢is) ; Wisd. ii, 24 (Pbdvw dé StaBdrov Odvaros elonAdev 


eis tov Kécpov); 2 Cor, xi, 3 (6 odus eEnnarnoev Evav év Th mavoupyia avrod) 








~ 
> pes 
OW, } ii * 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 63 


obstacles for the preachers of the Gospel asd persecutions for 
the faithful; he it is that foments idolatry, spreads doubt in 
men’s minds, and incites rebellion in their hearts. His usual 
name is Satan, but Paul calls him also Belial and the serpent 
in the Epistles to the Corinthians, and the devil in the Epistle 
to the Ephesians, the Pastorals, and the Acts.* Sometimes 
he describes him as a single person or as a collective 
being representing the power of evil; at other times he dis- 
seminates him among a multitude of evil spirits who inhabit 
the higher spheres, the supramundane regions, or the dark- 
ness.2. It is difficult to decide how far the Apostle uses the 
commonly received vocabulary of that time on this subject, 
without appreciating its full significance, for his formulas 
are not generally the object of an express assertion, and 
almost all of them are found in Jewish and rabbinical 
theology.2 What he affirms clearly is that the great enemy 
has thus created for himself a kingdom, intended to oppose 
the kingdom of God. 

Every kingdom spreads through time and space, occu- 
pies territory and has a certain period of duration; the 
territory in which the empire of Satan is powerful is thts 
world; the time which is assigned to it is the present age. 

For the Jews of apostolic times the present world and the 
present age were two similar expressions, which formed a 
pendant to the world to come and the age to come—that 1s 
to say, to the terrestrial reign of the Messiah and to the 


heavenly reign of God in his saints. They drew from this 


contrast a more or less pronounced unfavourable meaning 
according to the view of the authors. It is not necessary to 
be very familiar with the language of St Paul to have 
observed that in his writings the world rarely denotes the 
whole material creation. The world is often the abode, the 
theatre, the actual condition of man; still oftener it is present 
humanity, weak, blind, delivered over to its passions, far 
removed from its original purpose.* Since the advent of sin, 





ono i i as a aa a a er Se a 
1 Tim. ii, 14 (4 8& yur) éfamarnbeica év mapaBdoe yeyover); John viii, 44 
(€xeivos avOpwroxrdvos Hv an’ dpxfis); 1 John ii, 8; Apoc. xil, 9, etc. 

1 Satan: Rom. xvi, 20 (God will crush him); 1 Cor. v, 5 and 1 Tim. i, 20 
(to deliver over to Satan); 1 Cor. vii, 5 (Satan tempts) ; 2 Cor. ii, 1! (seeks 
to destroy) ; xi, 14 (transforms himself into an angel of light) ; xii, 7 (buffets 
the Apostle) ; 1 Thess. ii, 18 (obstacle to his projects) ; 2 Thess. ii, 9 (paves the 
way for Antichrist); 1 Tim. v, 15 (attracts bad Christians to himself) ; 
Acts xxvi, 18.—Zhe Devil - Eph. vi, 11 (machinations) ; I Tim. iii, 6 (judge- 
ment); 1 Tim. iii, 7 and 2 Tim. ii, 26 (snares) ; Acts xiii, 10 (son of the devil) ; 
Eph. iv, 27 (unde didore tomov TH SiaBérw).—Belial: 2 Cor. vi, 15.—Lhe 
Serpent: 2 Cor.xi,3. Cf. Apoc. xii, 9: 6 Spdxwv 6 péyas, 6 ddis 0 apxaios, 
6 xadovpevos AidBodos xat 6 Latavas, 6 mAavav Thy oixouperny oAnv. 

2 Eph. ii, 2; vi, 12. 2 See Note P, pp. 408 ff. 

‘ In the sense of universe, xéapos is rarely found except in Rom. 1 203 
Eph. i, 4 (cf. Acts xvii, 24). In 1 Cor. xiv, 10; Col. i, 6; 1 Tim. vi, 7, it is 
already the world, as the abode of man. Elsewhere it is almost always 
corrupted humanity. See Note Q, II, pp. 417 is 


64 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


the world is the enemy of God; the wisdom of the world is 
opposed to the wisdom of God, the spirit of the world to the 
spirit of God, the sorrow of the world to the sorrow accord- 
ing to God, the things of the world to the things of God. 
Paul expresses with remarkable energy this irreconcilable 
hostility by saying that he is crucified to the world and that 
the world is crucified to him. The same unfavourable mean-~ 
ing sometimes attaches to the present age by virtue of a 
manifest or unspoken antithesis to the age to come. The 
coming age is the era of unalloyed and endless happiness ; 
the present age, exposed to miseries, death, and sin, is 
depraved in its principles and tendencies.2. Thus the world 
and the age come to be almost synonymous; yet the etymo- 
logical distinction remains and the synonomy is not absolute.3 

The world thus understood is the kingdom of Satan; the 
age is the length of time assigned to his reign. The Epistle 
to the Hebrews, St John and St Paul express this domination 
by somewhat different formulas: St John calls Satan ‘ the 
prince of this world’’ ;4 the Epistle to the Hebrews attributes 
to him “‘ the power of death’’ ;5 St Paul, going still further, 
calls him ‘‘ the god of this age.’’® After the final triumph, 
God will be all in all; but, during the period of conflict which 
will last till the parousia, the empire of the world is divided 
and the devil claims his share of sovereignty. He gathers 
round him the outlaws, the rebels, and the deserters, and 
blinds them by his sophisms; he draws them away from the 


* Wisdom (1 Cor. i, 20, 21, 24), spirit (1 Cor. li, 12), sorrow (2 Cor. vii, 10). 
Cf. 1 Cor. i, 27-28 ; vii, 33, 34 (7a Tod xéopov . . . Td Tod Kupiov), 

* Gal. i, 4: &€« Tob aldvos Tob éveat@ros qrovnpod. 

® (Eph. ii, 2): xara zév atdva Tod Kécpou Todrov, without tautology. 
The Hebrew pb y (translated aidv in the Septuagint and saeculum in the 


Vulgate) is derived from a root whose primordial meaning is to Azde, and 
by means properly the distant past, which is lost in the night of ages ; then, 
by extension, a dong, inde}intte, limitless, eternal duration either in the past 
or in the future. As there is a relation between the duration of the world 
and the world which endures, this word in rabbinical Hebrew and in Aramaic 
came finally to signify also the world , and it is this last sense which alone has 
been preserved in Arabic.—In its most ancient and classic meaning the 
Greek word aidv signifies the whole duration ofhumaniife. Itisthus defined 
oy the author of De caelo, i, 9, and by the lexicographers Eustathius (r6 
Hetpov Tis avOpwmivns CwAs) and Hesychius (6 ris Cwijs ypdvos). More 
often it is the normal duration of a man’s life (seventy years), finally any sort 
of duration, provided it is considered as indefinite or very long. From this 
come the expressions dm’ aidvos, &’ afava, eis al@va, €£ aidvos, ab aelerno, 
tm aeternum. Having reached this stage of its evolution, aldjv became 


adapted to translate the Hebrew povy, which evolved in a contrary manner: 
first indefinite duration, then long but limited duration. 

* John xii, 31 ; xiv, 30; vi, 11 (6 dpywy rod KOgp0v ToUTOU), 

* Heb. ui, 14 (tov 70 Kpdros éxovra tod davarou). 

* 2 Cor. iv, 4: 6 Beds Tod aldvos rovrov. The metaphor is to be compared 
with guorum deus venter est (Phil. iii, 19; dv 6 beds 7 KotAia). Itis curious 
to note that it is found also among the Rabbis: Deus primus est Deus verus, 
ed Deus secundus est Samael. (Jalkut Rubeni). 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 65 


influence of the Gospel; he reigns over them completely; he 
is their god. As his domination can establish itself and 
endure only through error and lies, ‘‘ the god of this age’’ 
is a god of darkness: 


Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against 
the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, 
but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world 
of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly regions." 


The occult power which makes war upon us is sometimes 
concentrated in the person of its head, sometimes divided 
up among a multitude of hostile beings, ‘* principalities 
and powers, princes of this world, spirits of wickedness.”’ 
Their sphere of action is the world, darkness, the sublunar 
regions. If these terms are taken in their literal sense, 
the celestial regions can be only places adjoining our globe, 
and commonly known under the name of heaven. That 
the evil spirits should dwell there is a necessity of the 
war waged by them against humanity. St Paul recalls to 
the Ephesians the time when they walked * according to the 
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of 
the air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of 
rebellion.2. The precise meaning of almost all these words iS 


Aceph.. vi; 11: 
’"Evivcacbe tiv ravorAlav toh Geot 
mpos 76 SUvacbat Uuas orivat mpds ras peBodlas rob d:aBdAov. 
12. Srt ok Eorw Huiv % mdAn mpds alua Kai odpxa. 
GAG mpos Tas dpyds, mpos Tas e€ovatas. 
mpos TOUS KOGMOKPATOpas TOD aKdTOUS TouUTov, 
mpos Ta TrVEvPATLKG THS TOVNpias Ev Tots 770 €rroupaviots. 

The hostile forces receive three qualifications: (2) They are the prznct- 
palities and powers as contrasted to flesh and blood ; that is to say, to what is 
feeble and perishable, like man himself.—(d) They are the rulers of this dark 
world: xoopoxpdtwp is used of a powerful monarch, such as the king of 
Egypt or Babylon; but here it is probably necessary to think of the etymo- 
logical meaning (mundi rectores), giving to mundus the unfavourable sense 
of which we have spoken ; then the darkness forms a sort of apposition to the 
world, and we can translate “‘ of this world of darkness ’”’ or ‘‘ of this dark 
world.”—(c) They are spzrits of wickedness (ra mvevpatixd = spiritual 
beings) tn the celestial regions (ev tots émoupaviois). The special meaning 
of this last word will be noted. Elsewhere 7a éxovpdua designates literally 
heaven, the abode of God and the angels (Eph. i, 3, 20; ti, 6; ii, 10) ; here 
it can signify only the lower heavens, the air, which is called in common 
parlance heaven (Matt. vi, 26: 7a meTewva. TOO OUpayod). 

Byron ciisee 

mepienaThoate Kata Tov aidva Tod Kéopov Tovrov, 
Kara Tov dpxovra THs eLovetas Tod aépos. 


a ~ ~ ~ a“ ca a > 
rod mvedparos Tod viv evepyodvros ev Tois vLois THS ameBelas. 


Before their conversion, the Christians who came from the Gentiles had 
been living in sin, walking according to the course of this world and accord- 
ing to the prince of the power of the air, as the rule of their conduct. Whatis 
the meaning of this double rule (introduced by xata) which is really only one? 

(a) According to the course of this world. It is a question of the present 
world (6 xécpos ob7os), of the corrupt world, hostile to Christ and to his work, 
subjected to the influence of the powers antagonistic to man, and opposed 

iI. 


66 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


disputed ; nevertheless, one cannot escape the impression that 
the air, which is mentioned, is indeed the material atmo- 
sphere in which the demons are, so to speak, ambushed, 
ready to fall upon man unexpectedly, and where the 
‘* adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking 
whom he may devour.’’! This conception was then common, 
and there is no anachronism in attributing it to St Paul. 
Cannot the sin which dominates the human race and which 
has its seat in the flesh, instead of being a personification of 
evil, be a veritable person, the devil himself? Some Fathers 
have thought so and several heterodox theologians still 
maintain it.2 But this opinion is not only unsupported by 
any solid reason, but meets with serious difficulties of 
exegesis. All that can and ought to.be conceded is that 
the presence of a personal being behind the principle of evil 
facilitates greatly the constant personification of sin. 


to the future world, where all will be justice and holiness. These two 
worlds exist at the same time ; each has its own duration (aidév), its distinct 
course. We can belong to one or the other, according as we place ourselves 
under its respective influence. The meaning is very intelligible and there is 
no reason why we should understand aidv as a personal being, as the Gnostics 
did subsequently. This meaning is foreign to the language of the New 
Testament, where aidv signifies duration and where 6 aidy tod Kdéapov Tovrov 
therefore will mean the course of this corrupt world, the duration which 
measures it. 

(4) According to the prince of the power of the air. Here the word prince 
(dpywv) designates a personal being, and this phrase is the explanation 
of the preceding one. There it was a question of an influence, here it 
is a question of a person who directs and controls this influence.-—The 
precise meaning of éfovgia is a matter of dispute. Some see in it a 
collective noun (the power or the powers—that is to say, the demons), 
and this agrees well with the word prince or chief, but much less with the 
word azr, which qualifies and specifies this power. It is better to regard 
efovoia as an abstract noun: the prince of the domination of the air, or the 
prince of the power which is dominant in the air, the genitive dépos being an 
objective genitive—As to the word atr, it is impossible to take it otherwise 
than its proper sense, for although dip signifies the dense air as contrasted 
to the imponderable ether, it does not mean obscurity or darkness; on the 
other hand, it never has the meaning of an intellectual or moral atmosphere. 
On the air inhabited by demons, see Note P. 

(c) Of the spirit that now worketh on the children of rebellion. Some 
exegetes think that rod mvevparos is put into the genitive by the attraction 
of the two preceding genitives, and that in reality it refers to rdv apyorra 
(according to the prince . . . the spirit). The meaning would be good, but 
the construction is very hard, if not inadmissible. The simplest explanation 
is to put tod amvevparos in apposition with ris éfoucias. If eovata were 
collective (domination for dominators), mvevua would also be collective (the 
spirit for the spirits), which appears a little strange. If, on the contrary, 
efovota is abstract, mvetua too will be so and will signify the manner of 
thinking, as one speaks of mentality, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the 
age. In this case Satan is represented as directing a power (ris efovatas), 
a perverse influence (rod mvevparos), rather than an army of personal 
beings, or demons. 

> 1 Pet.v; 8. rh James iv, 7. 

* Simon, Die Psychologie des Ap. Paulus, Gottingen, 1897, pp. 51-54, 
and also Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, vol.i, p. 197, 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 67 


4. Does Paul know of a class of intermediate spirits, who 
are neither demons nor angels, although destined perhaps to 
become such some day, indeterminate beings, more malicious 
than wicked, usually hostile to man through love of mischief 
or by caprice, recalling the fauns, elfs, dryads, and nymphs 
of Greek and Latin mythology, the sprites, goblins, sylphs, 
and imps of medieval legends, the fairies and jinns of Arabian 
stories, the genii of the winds and waters of animist religions 
and of popular superstition? This is an exceedingly modern 
question which the ancient commentators have neither pro- 
pounded nor suspected. Let us say at once that there is not 
in St Paul the slightest trace of this new conception. When 
he writes to the Galatians: ‘‘ If we or an angel from heaven 
preach to you another Gospel, let him be anathema,’’! he is 
speaking of good angels, of those who look upon the face 
of God; but he does not seriously consider a case in which 
either an angel or himself should come to overturn what he 
has built. The hypothesis is impossible of realization; only it 
is less repugnant to the reason than the truth of another 
Gospel would be. 

Neither does the counsel given to the Corinthians pre- 
suppose the existence of disloyal angels. ‘‘ The woman must 
have on her head ’’ the veil, symbol of the marital ‘‘ power,’’ 
“‘ because of the angels.’’ The term ‘‘ the angels,’’ without 
any other explanation, never means any but good angels. We 
must not, therefore, think of those celestial spirits, neither 
definitely good nor bad, who, according to the Book of 
Enoch, fell in love with the daughters of men and sinned 
with them. This interpretation has the inconvenience of 
introducing a strange theme into the context, without having 
the advantage of corresponding to the Jewish ideas of the 
time; for the fall of the angels was for the Jews a fact of 
ancient history, the repetition of which was seen no more. A 
simpler and more natural exegesis is suggested by the atten- 
tive reading of the passage: ‘‘ Knowing the bond of sub- 
ordination which unites the woman to the man, either in the 
very act of creation or in the design of the Creator, the 
woman is to wear upon her head the sign of her dependency, 
because of the angels associated by God with the creative 
act and charged by him to promulgate the Law and to watch 
Over its observation.’’ It is less through respect for the 
angels who are witnesses of the eucharistic sacrifice than 
through fear of the angels appointed to the government of 
the world and the Church. 

In favour of intermediate spirits, who are neither angels 


* 1 Cor. xi, 10: ia trobro ddeirer  yuvn éfovalav exew én rijs xedadfs bia 
AY > / . ° 
tovs ayyéAouvs. On this difficult text see Robertson and Plummer or 
Bachmann in the works cited above, p. 42, note. These authors regard our 
explanation as certain. 


68 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


nor demons, the following text is also invoked: ‘‘ We speak 
wisdom among the perfect : yet not the wisdom of this world, 
neither of the princes of this world that come to naught (Tov 
Katapyoupevwv); but we speak the wisdom of God in a 
mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained 
before the world unto our glory. Which none of the princes 
of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would 
never have crucified the Lord of glory.”} Some Fathers 
thought that ‘‘ the princes of this world’’ were the demons; 
and certain modern commentators see in them the elemental 
spirits who call into operation the physical forces of nature. 
But, without speaking of the strange idea that demons or 
elemental spirits crucified Christ and that they would not 
have crucified him if they had had the true wisdom, the 
context clearly indicates that the ‘‘ princes of this world ’’ 
denote human beings, those who then governed the world 
and who had the power to put Jesus to death. Indeed, in 
these first two chapters, Paul establishes a contrast between 
human wisdom on the one side, wisdom according to 
the flesh, the wisdom of this world, which is the property 
of the philosophers, the noble, and the powerful, and on the 
other divine wisdom, revealed by the Holy Spirit to the 
humble, the weak, and the lowly, who form the bulk of 
the Church. The latter wisdom was unknown to the Herods, 
the Caiaphases, and the Pilates of that time, for if they had 
known it they would not have crucified the author of wisdom 
himself. Let not the faithful, therefore, blush for their low 
social condition, their ignorance, and their insignificance 
according to worldly stanaards,-for they possess a wisdom 
to which the geniuses and potentates of this world could not 
attain. Who does not see how much the introduction of 
demons or elemental spirits would disturb the course of such 
clear reasoning? ¥ 
The theory of elemental spirits shelters itself sometimes 
under the protecting shadow of an obscure text. God, 
‘“‘ despoiling the principalities and powers, hath made of 
them an open show, triumphing over them by the cross.’’? 
It is unquestionable that ‘‘ the principalities and powers ”’ 
include sometimes the infernal spirits. But it is otherwise 
here. In fact, one cannot resist the impression that the 
Apostle here refers to the ‘‘ principalities and powers ’’ which 
he has just mentioned a few verses previously. The Colos- 
sians had the habit of honouring them with a superstitious 
worship (Opyoxeia tov adyyéAwv) on account of their intrinsic 
dignity and because they knew them to be associated in the 


1 1 Cor. ii, 6-8. See above, p. 42. ; 

* Col ii, 15. We have given the explanation of this text in an article 
entitled: ‘‘The Triumph of Christ over the Principalities and Powers’ 
(Recherches de ssience religteuse, vol. iii, 1912, pp. 201-229). 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 69 


promulgation and guardianship of the Mosaic Law. Paul 
reminds them that God has nailed this superannuated Law 
to the cross of Jesus and divested the mediators of the 
ancient covenant of their power. There is now only one 
Mediator ; the role of the angels has passed away and they 
now serve to promote the exaltation of the Crucified One, of 
whose triumphal chariot, so to speak, they are the escort. 
That they have been unfaithful to their mission the Apostle 
does not imply ; but their mission is none the less ended, and 
the Colossians are wrong to make use of them to introduce a 
worship injurious to Christ. 


ITI—SLAVERY OF THE FLESH AND LIBERTY OF THE SPIRIT 


1, False Theories. 2. The Flesh and the Spirit. 3. The Flesh and Sin. 
4. Résumé. 


1. Since man possesses the three essential elements of 
moral life—knowledge of God, the natural law, and free 
will—what does he still lack in order to attain his highest 
end? The end of a being is not to be found outside of the 
‘sphere of its activity, and if man is destined for blessedness, 
he must be able to attain it. Yet the contrary seems to result 
from the doctrine of Paul, particularly in the Epistle to the 
Romans, where he teaches that the moral impotence of 
man comes from the flesh, and has no other remedy but 
the Spirit of God. te 

Between the spirit and the flesh we have already pointed 
out two oppositions: one physical, between the constituent 
parts of the same being; the other ontological, between com- 
plete substances, the respective character of which is. 
spirituality and corporality. We must now join to these 
the moral and religious opposition, which is the principal, the 
most important,-and really the only opposition characteristic 
of Paul’s Gospel. The mistake of a great number of © 
heterodox theologians has been practically to confound the 
moral antithesis ‘‘ flesh and spirit,’’ either with the physical 
or the ontological opposition. They hoped in this way to 
unify concepts and simplify theories, but instead of clearing 
up the problem they have only made it more obscure. 

The first, who are all followers of the school of Baur, 
claim that Paul, here abandoning the ground familiar to 
Judaism, makes a rather unfortunate incursion into the 
domain of Greek philosophy. The monotheism of the Bible 
stops him, however, halfway; he does not go as far as 
metaphysical dualism, but still adheres to moral dualism.’ 


1 Holsten, Die Bedeutung des Wortes odp§ im Lehrbegriff des Paulus, 
Rostock, 1855 (pamphlet incorporated in Zum Evang. des Paulus und 
Petrus, Rostock, 1868). Holsten has been followed by Liidemann, Die 
Anthropologie des Ap. Paulus und thre Stellung innerhalb seiner Hetlslehre, 


70 _, THE THEOLOGY -OF ‘ST "PAUL 


Paul, it is said, has carried into the moral order the physical 
antithesis that the Old Testament is accustomed to establish 
between God and the world and between man and the Spirit 
of God, without perceiving his fallacious reasoning and with- 
out reflecting that this is to ascribe to the Creator of nature 
the origin of sin. 

In order to maintain this paradox, it is necessary to impute 
to the Apostle many contradictions. If the flesh is inherently 
bad in so far as it is opposed to the spirit, how, then, can 
the flesh of Christ be holy? Now it is certain that St Paul 
gives to Christ a flesh similar to our own, and that he never- 
theless denies that he has anything to do with sin.! This 
proves clearly that sin is not inherent in the flesh, from which 
it is separable. If our body is irremediably impure, how can 
it be the temple of the Holy Ghost?? How can it serve as an 
instrument for the works of justice?? How can it be offered 
up to God, as a living sacrifice pleasing unto him?* The 
Apostle invites us to avoid ‘‘ all defilement of the flesh and of 
the spirit’’5; but, if the relation of the flesh to sin were 
necessary and essential, it would be no more possible for us 
to defile it than it would be possible for us to preserve it from 
defilement. Could Paul, from a dualistic point of view, speak 
of a redemption of the body and present it as the perfect 
achievement of salvation? ‘‘ Our salvation, on the contrary, 
should be perfect, as soon as our soul is freed from the fetters 
of matter.’’® 

According to the dualistic theory, Adam has no significance ; 
he is only the first sinner because he was the first man. Now 
there is more and more agreement among theologians that 
the anthropology of St Paul has its foundation in the Old 
Testament. The account in Genesis, with its two immediate 
corollaries—a personal God, superior to the world, and 
matter created and therefore good—is always present in his 
thought. To seek in his writings for the Gnostic dualism, 
ee ee ee ee 
Kiel, 1872, pp. 50-71 ; by Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus, Leipzig, 1873, p. 48 
(with important restrictions and modifications in the second edition, 1890 ; 
and in Das Urchristentum, Berlin, 1887); and by Holtzmann, Neutest. 
Theologte, 1897, vol. ii, pp. 19-22. Holsten maintains that according to 
Paul sin is essential to man, for it is nothing but the sensuous appetite 
or émBupyia (Paulinische Theologie, Berlin, 1808, p. 81). Paul has not 
reflected on the consequences and has not succeeded in explaining how the 
pagans are capable of any good action (Rom. ii, 14-16). Refutation of the 
dualism of Holsten by Weiss, Beyschlag, Gloél, Sabatier, Juncker, Stevens, 
and above all by H. Sladeczek, Paulintsche Lehre tiber das Moralsubjekt, 
Ratisbon, 1899. 

1 2Cor.v,21. On this text, see p. 204. #1 Coravi. 10: 

+ ROM av ieee * Rom. xii, 1. 2 Cor.'vil, 1, 

* Sabatier, Z’apdtre Paul$, 1896, p. 309. But the author, in the appendix 
on the origin of sin added to this third edition, falls back into the dualistic 
explanation which he disputes in the main portion of the work ; according 
to him the flesh is no longer the effect of Adam’s sin, but the cause, 


HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST ‘6 


which makes of matter an evil principle, is an audacious 
paradox, contradicted by all the texts, and irreconcilable 
with the biblical education of Paul and his repeated allusions 
to the first chapters of Genesis. The share of Hellenic 
influence upon him remains to be debated; but, however 
great it may be supposed to be, its importance is much 
diminished by the consideration that the psychology of the 
Apostle is only secondary in his teaching ; it is not psychology 
that dominates and directs his theological doctrine; it is his 
theological doctrine that commands and determines his 
psychology. 

From the fact that in Paul’s writings the flesh is always the 
animate matter, that it includes the soul in its concept, that 
sins of the intellectual order are attributed to the flesh, and 
that in one passage the expressions ‘‘ You are men’’ and 
““You are carnal’’ are exchanged as synonyms, other Pro- 
testant theologians conclude that the flesh, in the moral 
sense in which it is employed here, designates human nature. 
If sin dwells in the flesh, this means, according to them, that 
man, by virtue of his inborn imperfection, has the oppor- 
tunity and the power of placing himself in opposition to 
God.' In order to be logical, they ought also to conclude— 
and some of them do not hesitate to do so—that man is 
carnal, not because he is man, but because he is a creature: 
from which there would result this triple paradox that Adam 
was as carnal as his descendants, that an angel is as carnal 
as a man, and that neither man nor angel can ever cease to 
be carnal, since they are essentially created beings. This is 
groundlessly to make Paul guilty of not knowing the differ- 
ence between moral evil and metaphysical evil, between 
the deprivation of a quality which, according to the intentions 
of God, the rational nature was to possess and the absence 
of a perfection resulting from the limitation essential to every 
finite being. But independently of these absurd conse- 
quences, the system in question cannot maintain itself, for it 
is to the material organism of man that Paul attaches sin. 


2. The flesh, especially from the moral point of view, which 
is the one that here concerns us, can hardly be defined except 
as a function of the spirit. In the Old Testament, the Spirit 
of God is the creator and preserver of things, the agent of 
miracles and of prophetic inspiration. In the New Testament 
its sphere of action is still more enlarged: it is the life- 
giving, regenerating, and sanctifying Spirit; all that relates 
to grace and to the charismata belongs to its sphere. Since 


1 Tholuck (Ueber oapé als Quelle der Stinde in Stud. u. Krit., 1855, 
fasc. 3), Miller (Lehre von der Stinde®), B. Weiss (Lehrbuch der bib]. 
Theol. des N.T.", Stuttgart, 1903, § 684), and H. Wendt (Flersch und Geist 
im 6161. Sprachgebrauch, Gotha, 1878), have maintained this system, 


72 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


it is the soul of the mystical body, of which Christ is the 
head, there is established between it and the just man a close 
relation, a very intimate bond; its proper name, derived from 
its personal character, is the Holy Spirit; its presence in us 
is more than an inward renewal, it is.a metamorphosis, a 
veritable creation, the production of a divine nature endowed 
with new qualities and activities. } 

To this new nature Paul gives also the name of spirit. 
From having misconceived this, certain exegetes become in- 
volved in the most improbable explanations. They wish to 
make a distinction only between the spirit of man, or the 
rational soul, on the one hand, and the Spirit of God, or the 
third Person of the Trinity, on the other; but there is an 
intermediate term—namely, the spirit which the Holy Spirit 
forms within us and which is related to him as the effect 
is to its cause. When ‘the Spirit beareth witness to our 
spirit ’’? no ambiguity is possible, and since the spirit which 
beareth witness is assuredly the Spirit of God, the spirit 
in whose favour it beareth witness can be only this new 
sense produced in us by the Spirit and capable of per- 
ceiving divine things; for the understanding, if left to 
itself, knows nothing of our adoptive sonship. There are 
other examples of this division of our faculties. The 
possessor of the gift of tongues is not understood by those 
about him, nor by himself, but only by God, unless he has 
received, in addition, the gift of interpretation : ‘‘ His rvetpa 
prayeth, but his vots is without fruit.’’? The ideal thing for 
him to do would be to pray both with the vots and also with 
the wvedua. A prayer made in an unknown tongue, under the 
impulse of grace, may be an excellent prayer, capable of edi- 
fying the speaker by the pious sentiments which it suggests, 
and, if inspired by the Spirit of God, it nourishes the spirit 
of man; but when it is not understood, it has no effect upon 
the intelligence. The spirit and the intellect are here distinct 
principles; one represents in us the natural, the other the 
supernatural element. From this point of view, the spirit 
includes the body as well as the soul; since our body, 
destined to become spiritual, has received in advance the 
germ of the Spirit and is the temple of the Holy Ghost.é 


* 2 Cor. v, 17 (ef tis ev Xpior@ xawv7 xrtots); Gal. vi, 15 (xawy xrlos) ; 
Eph. ii, 15 ; iv, 24 (katds dvOpwros). 

* Rom. viii, 16: Adré 7d avetpa ouppaprupet TH mvevpate Hudv sre 
€opev réxva @eod. There are two distinct testimonies (cuppaprupet): that 
of the Holy Spirit which expresses itself by chartsmata, and that of our 
spirit of sonship which manifests itself in confidence, desire, etc. 

* 1 Cor. xiv, 14,15: Td mvedud pov mpocetyerar, 6 8 voids pov axapmds 
€orw. Ti obv éorw; mpocevtouat T@ mvevuatt, mpocevéona S€ Kai 7H vot. 
It is evident that “ my spirit” (rd mvedud pov) is neither the Holy Spirit 
nor the vofs. 

“2 Cor. i, 22; v, 5 (dppaPdy roo mvevparos); 1 Cor. vi, 19 (vads rod 
dyiov mvevparos) ; Rom. viii, 23 (dmapyi rod mvevparos Eyovres). 





HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 73 


If the spirit designates the entire man, as grace remakes 
him, the flesh also designates the entire man, as sin made 
him ; the understanding becomes carnal when it is disordered ; 
there exists, then, a carnal wisdom; the Corinthians are 
called carnal for keeping up intrigues and dissensions; the 
flesh has its thoughts and acts of volition, its affections and 
hatreds; finally, the sins which are due to the intelligence, 
such as idolatry, envy, enmity, and quarrels are ranked 
among the works of the flesh. Nay, more,.man is carnal 
from the one fact that he remains unresponsive to the 
influences of the Spirit of God. Wisdom according to the 
flesh, which of itself would be a thing of no importance, be- 
comes evil from the moment that it comes into conflict with 
the spirit: ‘‘ Whereas there is among you,’’ he says to the 
Corinthians, ‘‘ envying and contention, are you not carnal 
and walk you not according to man? While one saith: I 
indeed am of Paul, and another : I am of Apollos, are you not 
men?” If Paul can reproach the neophytes with being 
men and with walking according to man, it is because there 
is.disorder in our nature; it is because man is no more what 
he ought to be according to the plans of God; it is because 
from the moral point of view there are within us two men, 
the old man and the new. 

The old man is not Adam, nor is the new man Jesus Christ, 
as certain ill-informed exegetes have for very weak reasons 
maintained. The old man, who dies in principle at baptism, 
whom St Paul exhorts us to put off more and more, is the 
inheritance of our first father, that fallen and corrupt nature 
which he has bequeathed to us, that carnal self spoken of in 
the Epistle to the Romans. The new man, who succeeds 
him, is the regenerated man, in whom supernatural grace 
completes the divine image, outlined by the creative Fiat. 


Lie not one to another ; since you have stripped yourselves of the old 
man with his deeds, and put on the new man, who is renewed unto 
[supernatural] knowledge according tothe image of him that created him. 

Put off the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error, 


and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who 
according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.? 
ee ee ee ee SS 

1 Col. ii, 18 (6 vots ris capKds); I Cor. i, 20; ill, 19 (4 codia tot xdcpov) ; 
ii, 5, 6, 13 (dvOparwv, avOpwrivn, Tov ala@vos tovrov) ; 2 Cor. i, 12 (capKtKn) ; 
Rom. viii, 6, 7 (76 dpdvnua THs @apkds) ; xiii, 14 (apdvota); Gal. v, 16 (émv- 
pla) ; Eph. ii. 3 (7a GeAnuara ris gapkos) ; Gal. v, 19, 20 (ra épya Tis capKos). 

2 Col. iii, 9. Mi) peddeobe ets adAn- 9. Nolite mentirt tnvicem, expo- 
Nous, dmexSvoduevot tov madaov seantes vos veterem hominem cum 
dvOpwmrov adv tats mpdgeow avrod, actibus suts, 

10. Kal évdvedpevot Tov véov Tov 10. et induentes novum eum quit 
dvaxawotpevov eis eéniypwow Kat’ renovatur in agnitionem secundum 
elxdva Too KTicavTos avTov. imaginem etc. 

Eph. iv, 22. dobécbar tas tov Eph. iv, 22. Deponere vos ve- 
saAadv dvOpwrov tov betpduevov terem hominem quit corrumpitur 
KaTa Tas emOuplas THs aaarys” secundum destderia errorts. 


74 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


While the inward man and the outward man, spoken of 
above, form the two parts of which man is composed, in 
whatever order of providence he is considered, the old man 
and the new are two consecutive states of the same man, 
delivered over at first to the influences of sin, of which Adam 
is the origin, and then to those of grace, of which Jesus 
Christ is the dispenser. According to the sense, therefore, 


the new man coincides with the spirit and the old man with 
the flesh. 


3. But although the word ‘‘flesh’’ designates the entire man, 
as fallen from original justice, the Apostle frequently puts 
the flesh into special relation with the material part of the 
human composite: ‘‘ I know that there dwelleth not in me, 
that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good.’’! Here the 
flesh is distinguished from the ‘‘ me,’’ as part from whole; 
the flesh belongs to the ‘‘ me,’’ but it is only the less noble 
part of it—namely, that which is opposed to reason, to the 
inward man, and St Paul also calls it ‘“‘ the law of sin which 
is in my members.’’? Undoubtedly, therefore, the seat of 
evil, the focus of sin, is the body itself. Thus the material 
part of man, without being in itself bad, is nevertheless the 
source of moral evil. How is this enigma to be solved? 


a ee ee 


23. avaveotoFa: S¢ rH mrevpart rod 23. Renovamint autem. sptritu 
voos tudv mentts vestrae 

24. kal évdtcacfat Tov Kater 24. Et indutte novum hominem, 
avOpwrov tov xara Bedv xricbévra év gut secundum Deum creatus est in 
dtxatoovvy Kai daudrnte ris dAnOelas. justitia et sanctitate veritatis. 


A. The first text is the easier. The only difficulty is to know whether the 
past participles dmexdvoduevor and éevdvoduevor give a reason for the im- 
perative, as we have supposed (Lie not, having stripped yourselves, that 
Is to say, stmce you have stripped yourselves), and then allusion is made to 
baptism (Gal. iii, 27) ; or whether they agree for the time with the imperative 
which precedes and virtually have the sense of an imperative (Lie not 
stripping' yourselves, meaning “but on the contrary, strip yourselves’) ; 
in this case it would be a question of the progress of the Christian life, con- 
sisting of putting off more and more the old man and of more and more 
putting on the new. The parallel passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
where all the infinitives are equivalent to imperatives, favours this second 
hypothesis. ; 

B. The newness of the new man is expressed by two terms xawés and veds. 
Properly speaking, xawés refers to the guality of what is new, without 
allusion to time ; veds indicates rather a recent date. But the two adjectives 
can be considered in St Paul as synonyms, for they are interchanged, as well 
as their corresponding verbs. (Col. iii, 10: rév vedy tov avakavovpevov, 
and Eph. iv, 27: dvaveotofat . . . rv Kawwdév.) 

C. As in the two texts creation is mentioned (Col. iii, 10: kar’ efxdva tod 
xrigavros adrdév, and Eph. iv, 24: rév Kara @edv xtiobévra), it is possible 
that the particle dvd in the compound verbs keeps all its force and signifies 
“anew,” taking us back thus to a time anterior to the first sin, when the old 
man did not yet exist, and when the new man still retained the supernatural 
image of the Creator. 

' Rom. vii, 18, * Rom. vii, 22, 23. 


? 





HUMANITY WITHOUT CHRIST 75 


First of all it results from the fact that sin, having entered 
into the world through the fault of Adam, invades all his 
posterity, because we are only one flesh with our. first father. 
Thenceforth all flesh becomes sinful, with the exception of 
him who took upon himself ‘‘ the likeness of sinful flesh,’’ 
without, however, knowing sin, seeing that he did not issue 
from the sinful mass of humanity according to the laws of 
natural generation, and, moreover, because sin is absolutely 
incompatible with his person. 

Nevertheless, it is necessary to recur to another considera- 
tion in order to justify the Apostle’s language. It is a fact 
of experience, commonplace because so true, that the body 
hinders the upward flight of the soul. Paul understood this 
better than anyone, when he exclaimed: ‘‘ Who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death?’’ By virtue of the intimate 
unity of all parts of the human composite, there is not 
perhaps a single action of the soul which does not react upon 
the body, nor an impression made upon the body which is not 
felt in the soul. Now the sensual appetites very often come 
into conflict with the end and aim of our higher nature, which 
is the true nature of man, and to complete this misfortune, 
they are essentially blind and selfish. Thus, while man finds 
in his reason a sure though insufficient source of aid against 
the attraction of evil, everything, so far as the senses are 
concerned, is only an obstacle. In order to re-establish 
equilibrium and to neutralize the temptation of the flesh, he 
needs the spirit—namely, an assistance superior to that which 
his own nature can render, a supernatural principle. Hence 
in St Paul the carnal man, the psychic man, the natural man, 
or simply man, are synonymous expressions which designate 
man left to himself and to his inborn corruption, without the 
antidote of the spirit. 

Thus, the flesh, in its moral significance, which alone con- 
cerns us here, is at once the cause and the effect of sin; and, 
of the two modes of action, it is the material part of our 
being which establishes this relation, because it is in some 
sort the vehicle of original sin and incites to actual sin. By 
this it is seen how different was the condition of the first 
man, and how different also would be the condition of 
humanity in a state of pure nature. By the free and kindly 
gift of the Creator the reason of the first man, possessing 
the mastery over the sensual appetite, caused harmony to 
reign in his entire being. This harmony, it is true, would 
not exist in a state of pure nature; but, independently of sin, 
this would be merely a physical imperfection and not a moral 
disorder. It is with concupiscence—and with greater reason 
—as it is with death. In a state of pure nature both would 
be the simple resultant of our organic constitution; in the 
present order of things, however, they mean a forfeiture, be- 


76 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


cause they deprive us of a good which, according to the 
plans of God, we were intended to havé ; they assume, there- 
fore, a moral character as being the fruit of sin and, in the 
case of concupiscence, as being the living root from which 
sin germinates. 


4. To sum up the argument: However varied may be the 
interpretations of the terms flesh and spirit, they are all con- 
nected with the fundamental meaning of animate matter and 
immaterial being. 

The spirit and the flesh, in the moral sense characteristic 
of Pauline theology, include the entire man, considered from 
different points of view: the spirit is man under the influence 
of the Holy Spirit; the flesh is man without the Holy Spirit. 

The flesh, the material part of man, is in itself neither bad 
nor essentially sinful, since it is capable of being purified, 
sanctified, and glorified. 

Nevertheless, the flesh, as it exists within us at present, 
implies a double connection with sin : an historical connection 
with the guilty head of our race, and a psychological connec- 
tion with the guilty act to which it inclines. 

The psychological connection is allied to the low, selfish, 
and blind instincts of our sensuous nature, which put it into 
continual antagonism with the essential good of our rational 
nature. In this conflict the understanding, if left to itself, is 
infallibly vanquished and becomes carnal; but, with the addi- 
tional support of the Holy Spirit, it comes out of the struggle 
victorious and the entire man becomes spiritual. 


CHARS 
THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 


I—Desicns oF MERCY 
1. The Will to Save. 2. Different Aspects of the Divine Will. 


I. INCE man cannot lift himself again by his own 
efforts or free himself by his own strength, it is 
necessary for God to extend his hand to him. This 
act of divine kindness, doubly undeserved both be- 
cause man has no right to it and because he is 

positively unworthy of it, is called mercy. Paul extends to 

all men the merciful goodness of the heavenly Father, so 
long as they are still being tested. 


I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions 
and thanksgivings be made for all men, [in Leen es for kings and for 
all that are in high stations, that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable 
life in all piety and honour. 

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who 
will have all men be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 
For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ 
Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.} 


The thought of the Apostle is so clear that no sophism 
can obscure it. It amounts to this: It is necessary to pray 
for all men without exception, because God, who is the God 


1 1 Tim. ii, 1-5. Cf. Belser, Die Briefe an Tim. und Titus, 1907. 


A. (1) Ilapaxadd . . . roeicBar denoeis, mpooevyds, evrevters, evxaptorias, 

B. dnép ravrwv dvOpdrwy, (2) vrep BacAéwr Kal mavrev ev UTEpoxy OvTwr, 

C. tva Fpepov Kal jovxtov Biov did-ywpev ev ndon evacBelg Kai cepvorntt. 

D. (3) Totro xadcv xal darddexrov evedmiov Tob awrijpos jucv Geod, 

E. (4) és mdvras dvOpubrous Oéder awOijvat cal els émiyvwoww dAnfeias €AGeiv. 
(5) els yap Geds, els xat pecirns Beod, KTA. 


It is necessary to distinguish in this text the form, the object, the end, the 
motive and the reason for the prayer recommended by the Apostle. 

A. The precise form and the distinction between the four kinds of prayers 
(Serjcers, mpocevyds, evrevfecs, evxaptorids) is of little importance for the 
general meaning ; but it cannot be reasonably doubted that here it is a 
question especially of public and solemn prayer. 

B. The object of the prayer is twofold : (a) all men in general (uép mavTwv 
dvOpdawv), (4) rulers in particular (irép Baoréwr cal mdvrwv ev vrepoxij 
évrwv). The word Baow\eis comprises all who have supreme authority, 
kings or emperors (the Roman emperor was called in the East Baovdevs) ; 
the expression of év dmepoxy dvres denotes all those who have a delegated 
authority, pro-consuls, propreetors, procurators and governors. 

C. The aim of the prayer (ii, 26): to procure for the Church a period of 

ace and tranquillity (iva #pepov xal movxiov Biov didywpyev), favourable for 
its external development and not less so for the exercise of Christian 


77 


78 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of all and whose Son has died for all, also desires the salva- 
tion of all. 

It is necessary to pray for all men without exception: not 
only for Christians, but for the pagans themselves, particu- 
larly for princes, whatever may be the infamy of their con- 
duct, because they can do more for good than for evil. This 
injunction is strikingly applicable, when it is remembered 
that the then reigning emperor was Nero, and that he had 
just unloosed upon the infant Church the most horrible 
persecution. An immediate corollary of the apostolic com- 
mand is that prayer is profitable to all men ; for who ever 
enjoins the impossible and absurd? 

God wills the salvation of all men: which must be under- 
stood of all without exception, since no exception is indicated 
but is on the contrary excluded by the emphatic character 
of the discourse and by the repetition of the word ‘“‘all’’. 
four times. It is in vain to object that the divine wish to 
Save is necessarily limited by the addition “ that all may 
come to the knowledge of the truth”: for, we are assured, 
since this second proposition cannot be absolutely and uni- 
versally true, the first one cannot be true either. The reply 
is easy: all human beings have not the use of their reason, 
but all, without a single exception, are capable of eternal 
salvation ; thus, while the phrase referring to the knowledge 
of the truth limits itself naturally to men who are capable of 
knowing it, the other phrase is limited by nothing and 
should, according to the rules of sound exegesis, retain its 
full significance. 

God wills the salvation of all, because he is the God of all 
and because Jesus Christ, the universal Mediator, has sub- 
mitted to death for all. As God is one, he is of necessity the 
beginning and supreme end of all men. Is it not natural that 
he should desire to bring them all to the goal of their 
destinies? That is the consideration which the Apostle has 
already emphasized in the Epistle to the Romans.! Let no 
one here bring up as a counter argument the original fall, 
which, by breaking off the harmony between God and man, 
SaaS Sa 5 errey ete aa ca OT RS SU 
virtues (€v mdon evceBela Kal ceuvornrt. The last word, which the Vulgate 
translates sanctitas, signifies rather “ gravity, dignity, respectability ’’). 
These lines were written in the midst of active persecution ; now, although 


the hostility of the State cannot stop the expansion of the Church, the good- 
will of public officials is always to be desired. 

D. The motive of the prayer for all men is to please God, because this act 
is morally good («aAdv) and acceptable to God. 

E. The reason for thts prayer ts twofold . first, because God, being the 
only God, is necessarily the Creator, the supreme end and the Father of all 
men ; secondly, because his Son, Jesus Christ, has suffered death for all. 
In regard to these last two verses see p. 167. For the practice of the early 
Church in regard to public prayers for sovereigns, see pp. 325-6. 

* Rom. iii, 29, 30. Ciexate 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 79 


has rendered the latter unworthy of divine benevolence. 
Beside the one and only God stands the universal Mediator, 
whose mission is precisely to re-establish good relations 
between earth and heaven, and who, by dying for all men, 
acquires for them all the same claim to mercy. 


The different explanations imagined by prejudiced theo- 
logians to limit the divine will to save, are sufficiently 
refuted by a simple presentation of them: (a) God wishes all 
those who will really be saved to be saved. A self-evident 
truth. (b) God wishes some men of every country and of 
every condition to be saved. By means of what exegesis 
can ‘‘all’’ be made synonymous with ‘‘some’’? (c) All is 
hyperbolical and signifies many. But the Apostle, by repeat- 
ing to satiety the word ‘‘all,’’ has undertaken to refute this 
singular hypothesis. (d) God wishes only the salvation of the 
elect, but he wishes us to desire the salvation of all men. 
He wishes, therefore, to make us desire what is impossible 
and to make us wish what he himself does not wish! More- 
over, it is a question in this text of what God wishes and 
not of what he wishes us to wish. (e) God wishes the salva- 
tion of all in the sense that he does something for all, 
although this something is insufficient to save them. This 
really means that he does and yet does not wish; in other 
words, -that he does not wish seriously, or, more simply, that 
he does not wish at all. (f) Jesus Christ, as man, wills the 
salvation of all, with an inefficacious will, knowing that the 
object of his will cannot be realized. But it is not the will 
of Jesus Christ that is in question here, but the divine will. 
Moreover, why should Jesus Christ, even as man, will what 
his Father does not will? 

It is indisputable that the Apostle takes his stand on the 
hypothesis of original sin; for, by urging Christians to pray 
for all men, he affirms that God at present wills salvation for 
all, and that Jesus Christ has died for all. Will anyone dare 
to ascribe to Paul this lame sort of reasoning: Pray for all 
men because God wills the salvation of some men, inasmuch 
as Jesus Christ has died for all? To be logical it would be 
necessary at the same time to limit these three propositions, 
which are so closely connected, and to say, for example: 
“Pray for the elect only, because God wills the salvation of 
the elect only, and because Jesus Christ died for the elect 
only.’ But then we should remain logical only to be thrown 
into arbitrariness and to fall into heresy. 

This is not the place in which to develop the corollaries of 
this teaching. A glance reveals the fact that the positive 
veprobation of Calvin is diametrically opposed to itpetie 
antecedent will to save all men excluding ipso facto the 
antecedent will to damn some of them, even on the hypo- 


80 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


thesis of original sin; for, as we have proved, this is the 
hypothesis which the Apostle adopts. We could never under- 
stand how the defenders of negative reprobation succeed in 
eluding our text. This reprobation is called negative either 
because it expresses itself by a negation or because it is the 
negation of a benefit; but it consists in a positive act of 
God: the partisans of the system recognize it and, if they 
denied it, it would be easy to demonstrate it. Now the 
antecedent will to refuse eternal salvation to some men is 
absolutely incompatible with the antecedent will to save them 
all, for the first will destroys the second, of which it is the 
contradiction. And it would be of no use to try to put these 
two wills on a different footing by an appeal to original 
sin; since, according to St Paul, the will to save remains 
universal even on the hypothesis of original sin. No subtlety 
of exegesis will ever escape this argument of elementary logic 
and common sense. The will to save is not absolute, for other- 
wise it would not fail of accomplishment; it is conditional, 
but with regard to a condition which does not depend upon 
itself alone; if not, it would be illusory and could be stated 
thus: “I would will, if I willed,’’ which plainly amounts to 
saying : ‘‘I do not will.’’’ 


2. Just as it is unreasonable to seek in St Paul the present 
scholastic terminology, so it would be equally rash and un- 
scientific not to distinguish in him the different expressions of 
the divine will. We must not confound the purpose (péeaxs), 
the good pleasure (évdoxia), the counsel (fBovAy), the will of 
God (BovAnpa, OéAnpa). The purpose of God! is an eternal 
and absolute act of consequent will, relating to a particular 
benefit, like the efficacious call to faith: it is free, since it is 
done according to his good pleasure; it is gracious, since it 
does not depend upon the merits of man; it is absolute, 
since it has for its effect the efficacious call; it is eternal, 
since it is anterior to the ages. In reality, the divine purpose 
is what best corresponds to predestination, a word which St 
Paul does not use; only predestination implies, as regards 
the order of execution, a precedence in time, which the 
purpose does not by itself express.—The good pleasure,” as 


* Rom. viii, 28; ix, 11; Eph. i, 11; iii, 11; 2 Tim. i, 9 (apd@eots).— 
Rom. iii, 25 ; Eph. i, 9 (zpori@e8ar).—See Vol. I, p. 434, and compare, for 
the local meaning of mpé in the compound, Ps. liii (liv), 5 : od mpoéBevro rév 
Ocov evimov adrav; Ps. c (ci), 3: ov mpocbeunv mpd offarudv pov mpéypa 
mapavopov. 

* Eph. i, § (xara rv eddoxtay rob OedAjpatos adrod); i, 9 (yywploas Hpiv 
TO pvotHptoy Tod OeAjparos avrod Kata THv evdoxiay avrod); Phil. ii, 13 (6 
evepyav ev viv Kat To OéAew Kal 70 evepyetv brép ris evSoxias) ; 2 Thess. i, 11 
(iva 6 Oeds mAnpdon macav evdoxiay ayafwovvns).—For evdoxeiv, 1 Cor. i, 
21; x, 5; Gal. i, 15; Col. i, 19.—On Eph. i, 5, 9 see pp. 88, 91; on Phil. ii, 13, 
p. 83.—We repeat again, since some pretend to misunderstand, that the good 
pleasure of God does not denote an arbitrary will. If we do not translate 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 81 


the word indicates, denotes the spontaneity as well as the 
liberty of the divine will; it is used, therefore, only in refer- 
ence to a benevolent and gracious act of will and is never 
applied to the permission of evil or to the punishment of 
crime.—Counsel: illumines and directs volition. St Paul 
could say without pleonasm that God ‘‘ worketh all things 
according to the counsel of his will,’’ because the divine will 
is neither blind nor arbitrary, obeys profound although often 
incomprehensible reasons for its decisions, and unfolds itself 
harmoniously in time and space in accordance with a plan 
conceived from all eternity.—Four’ wills of God can be dis- 
tinguished :? the will of precept, the will of desire, the will of 
decree, and the will of permission. The first is evidently 
absolute, for it is one with the moral law; but the necessity 
which results from it refers to the obligation of the act, not 
to the existence of the act itself. The will of desire is a 
serious and active will, but its realization is conditioned by 
the exercise of a foreign will. The will of decree is absolute 
and inevitable; but when it has for its object the free acts of 
man, it is not anterior to all prevision of those acts, as we 
shall presently see. Finally, the will of permission is a sort 
of negative will which allows the human faculties their free 
operation, even for evil. 

The will of God respects the liberty of his creatures and 
does not always attain its effect. That is why we pray every 
day that the will of God may be done more and more, on 
earth as in heaven. Nothing happens without some inter- 
vention of his will. Evil itself would not exist without 
tolerance on his part (dvox#).* The prophets, in saying that 
God creates evil, mean physical evil, punishment of moral 
evil; but St Paul does not fear to affirm that God delivers 
the pagans over to their passions, their evil desires, and their 
reprobate senses.4 When God turns evil into good by re- 
pairing or punishing it, it can be said that he wishes it by a 
will that is virtually twofold; on the one hand it permits evil, 
and on the other it directs it to good.° 


Se 


evsoxia by ‘“ benevolence,” it is because benevolence is a disposition, while 
eddoxia is the act of a benevolent will. Those who object that Paul “ did 
not at all intend to signify ‘ good pleasure’ in the sense, which the word 
has gained, of purely arbitrary choice,” are merely forcing an open door. 

1 Eph. i, 11 (7a mavra evepyobvros Kata Thy BovdArjy Tob BeAjjparos adrod) ; 
Heb. vi, 17 (émfSeiéar . . . 76 Guerdberov THs BovAjs abrob); Acts xili, 36; 
xx, 27 (Paul’s speech).—The word is again used in Luke vii, 30 and in Acts 
ii, 23 ; iv, 28. 

- ee examples of these four wills of God in St Paul: (a) W2ll of precept: 
Rom. ii, 18 ; xii, 2; Eph. v, 17; vi, 6; Col. i, 9; iv, 12.—(6) Will of destre - 
1 Thess. iv, 3; 1 Tim. ii, 4; Rom. ix, 22 (desire of showing his justice neu- 
tralized by the will to show his patience).—(c) Will of decree - Rom. OG hey 
Eph. i, 9, 11 ; and the formula “ apostle by the will of God” (1 Cor. i, I, etc.). 
—(d) Will of permission - Rom. 1, 10 ; Xv, 3251 Cor. iv, 19. 

2 Rom. ii, 1; iii, 26. * Rom.i, 24-28. * See Vol. I, pp. 256-8, 266-7. 

il. 6 


82 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


II—TuHeE REDEEMING PLAN 


1. Grace and Free Will. 2. Order of Intention and Order of Execution. 
3. Extension of the Divine Plan. 


1. Josephus somewhere attributes to the Pharisees of his 
time a doctrine analogous to the Stoics’ profession of faith, 
expecting everything from God, except virtue. According 
to him, the Essenes referred everything to destiny; the 
Sadducees nothing; the Pharisees, a part to destiny, part 
to free will. Does destiny—an idea totally foreign to Jewish 
theology—here, perhaps, represent providence or the divine 
decree? Elsewhere Josephus modifies his description of the 
theory of the Pharisees thus: “ Although everything depends 
on destiny, man remains none the less free, since God has 
arranged a sort of equilibrium between the decree of destiny 
and man’s liberty.’’! Nevertheless, the Pharisees had, in 
practice, to diminish or attenuate the divine. initiative. 
Justice being for them only the carrying out of a contract 
signed with God, they thought they were free from any 
obligation of gratitude when they had faithfully observed it; 
and regarded themselves even then as Jehovah’s creditors. 

That Saul shared this error before his conversion, nothing 
leads us to suppose: so keen and profound in him is the two- 
fold sentiment, first, that man can never boast in regard to 
his salvation, and, secondly, that everything comes from God 
in the supernatural, as well as in the natural, order.? But if 
he does not sacrifice to man’s free will the sovereign domain 
of God, no more does he build the sovereign domain of God 
upon the ruins of that free will. His repeated exhortations 
would have no sense, if man were not free to do good and to 
avoid evil. Let us recall merely, in order not to come back 
to a question which is so clear, the three following Pauline 
assertions : Man is responsible for his actions, both good and 
bad; he must render an account of them to the Supreme 
Judge,® he is without excuse if he does wrong, because he 
knows that, by so doing, he merits death,* and because God, 


* Antig. Jud., XII, v, 9: Of pev Bapicaior rwad xat ob ndvra THS eiwapyerns 
elvat A€youow Epyov, twa 8'ed” Eavrois Undpxew, ovpPatvew Te Kal pr yivecOat. 
Here the things which depend on us are contrasted with those which 
depend on: destzmy.—On the contrary (Antig. /Jud., XVIII, i, 3), destiny 
extends to everything, without, however, discrediting free will: ITpdocecOai te 
eiuappevy 7a mdvra akiodvres, ovSé Tob dvOpwrelou Td BovAdpevov ris én’ avrots 
Opps ddatpodvra. Here is a mixture (xpaots) of the two.—Elsewhere 
(Bell. Jud., I, vii, 14) destiny and free will unite and co-operate: Hipvappeévn 
TE Kat Oe@ mpoodrrover mdvra, kal rd pev mpdrrew 7a Sixaa Kal pL) KaTa TO 
mAciarov emi rots dvOpwmos Ketofar, Bonbeiv Sé ets Exacrov Kai THY eiuapperny. 
But what can destiny here, being distinct from God, really he ? 

* Rom. xi, 36. See on this subject Vol. I, Dal 77 

* Rom. ii, 12-16 ; xiv, 10; 2 Cor. v, 10, etc. 

“ Romaine ze 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 83 


not content with giving him the notion of good, does on his 
part all that is necessary to lead him to it.! The believer’s 
act of faith is an act of obedience agreeable to God; unbelief 
is an act of insubordination, contempt, obstinacy, and wilful 
hardness of heart, which calls down upon him the divine 
wrath ;? now whoever talks of obedience or disobedience, 
talks of freedom of the will.—But neither is the unbeliever 
lost beyond the possibility of repentance, nor the believer 
saved except by hope.? The latter must always fear and the 
former can always hope. The salvation of the believer is 
assured only on God’s part, on man’s it is conditional ‘ if he 
perseveres in the faith,’’* likewise the loss of the unbeliever 
is certain only if he persists in his unbelief. If he is con- 
verted, he will be saved in his turn.5 

It is a remarkable thing that Paul unites in the same 
phrase these two ideas, which to so many heterodox theo- 
logians appear contradictory, and that he does not seem to 
see in this an antimony: ‘‘ Work out your salvation with 
fear and trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both to 
will it and to do it.’’® 

We must work for our salvation as if everything depended 
on us and abandon ourselves to God as if everything depended 


oe Phil}ii; 12; 13. * Rom. ii, 8. *> Rom. viii, 24. 

perrome 2022), Colin 23) 5 Rom, xi, 23; 

* Phil. ii, 12,13: pera doBov Kat rpdp0u THY €avtdv owrnpiay Katepydlecbe. 
Geos yap €orw 6 evepyav ev tuiv Kat rd Oérew Kal rd evepyeitv Umep ris 
eddoxlas.—(2) The words ¢éBos and tpduos are often put in proximity 
(Gen. ix, 2; Ex. xv, 16; Isa. xix, 16 ; 1'Cor: ii; 3; 2 Cor. vii, 45: Eph. vi, 5), 
and their union does not seem much to strengthen the idea. The Apostle 
appears to allude here to Ps. ii, 11: Aovdevoare T@ Kvpiw ev doBw xat 
ayadXdcbe atte ev Tpoum.—(b) The compound verb Katepyalecbat signifies 
“‘to accomplish, to finish, to bring to a good ending”: usgue ad metam 
(Bengel, Grzomon), for the salvation of the faithful is already begun.—(c) The 
connection between verse 12 and verse 13 (yap) is rather difficult. There 
is on this point a monograph by Schader (Der Gedankeninhalt von Phil. 
li, 12-13, in Gretfswalder Studien, 1895). “‘ Verse 13,” says P. Lemonnyer 
(Zpitres de Saint Paul, Paris, 1905, vol. ii, pp. 21-22), ‘‘ presents itself as the 
justification of the counsel formulated in verse 12. Its meaning remains 
doubtful. Are the Philippians to fear and tremble because God wishes their 
salvation and works in them to this end, and because they will incur his 
wrath if they do not respond to the action and desire of God ? Or are they 
to fear and tremble because, in the accomplishment of their salvation, they 
depend upon the action of God? ... It is impossible to reply with any 
degree of certainty.’”? The meaning would indeed be very doubtful if the 
emphasis of the discourse rested upon the words “ with fear and trembling ”’; 
but it is much less so if the emphasis is laid upon xatepydleabe, as the best 
exegetes admit. It is necessary to work diligently for our salvation, for God 
is working for it too.—(d) The last words, vmép rijs etSoxias, must not be 
interpreted as if they were xara tv evdoxiav, “according to his good 
pleasure.”’ Certainly edSoxia is the “ good pleasure”’ of God and not the 
“‘ good will’’ of man; but drép means “ for,” ‘‘in view of.”? The sense is: 
God worketh in you the willing and the doing, 7” order to accomplish his 
benevolent designs towards you (cf. Rom. viii, 31). Let us not forget that here 
is a question of Christians already in possession of sanctifying grace. 


84 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


on him. Nothing is more just than that we should enter on 
this work with fear and trembling, for our eternal happiness 
or our eternal misery is here at stake, and no one 1s 
guaranteed against the weakness of his will. Paul himself 
experiences this fear; he knows that, even if not conscious 
of doing any evil, he is not sure of being justified ;* he 
mortifies his body and treats it as a slave for fear that, after 
having preached to others, he himself may be a castaway.? 
But here is a maxim which resembles a paradox. We must 
work out our salvation, because God worketh in us to will it 
and to do it. 

Several Protestant theologians of our time see in these two 
parts of the phrase an irreducible opposition and severely 
blame St Paul for not having perceived it. Some excuse him 
by saying that here is an incomprehensible mystery. One of 
them, more disrespectful than the others, sends him uncere- 
moniously from the school of Gamaliel to that of Aristotle, 
which taught better reasoning.* The argument of these 
great thinkers is simplicity itself: If God, they say, does _ 
everything in the work of salvation, man has nothing to do; 
and if man does everything, there remains nothing for 
divinity to do. Their error arises from the fact that they 
conceive the combined action of God and man, as if it were a 
joint work. If God and man were partial causes and of the 
same order of being, the objection would be conclusive ; but 
this is not the case: God and man together produce the 
entire effect, but each in his own order ;* and yet the effect 
could not be produced without their simultaneous co-opera- 
tion. It is, therefore, the assurance of the divine co-opera- 
tion, added to the feeling of his own weakness, that inspires 
in man both confidence and fear; and still more confidence 
than fear, for, the implied quotation from the Psalmist being 


1 1 Cor. iv, 4: ovdév éuavr@ avvoida, GAA’ ovK ev rovTw SediKkaiwpas. 

® 1 Cor. ix, 27: Urwmalw pov rd odpa Kat Hs a pimws dAdots 
Knpvéas abros addxipos yévwuat. The verb txwmadlew signifies to ‘ bruise 
with blows,” from the noun trumoy, ‘ blue, livid traces left by blows.’’ The 
adjective dddéxtwos means properly ‘one who does not bear the test or 
examination,” and then “‘ rejected, discarded.” 

8 The author of this clumsy jest is Fritzsche. Von Soden and Pfleiderer 
merely say that Paul does not perceive the contradiction, or that he acts as 
if he were not conscious of it. Holtzmann declares that Paul defends free 
will when he is speaking as a preacher or a moralist, but upholds the theory 
of determinism when he is speaking as a theologian (eutest. Theol., 
vol. ii, pp. 169-171). There is in Holtzmann (zdd., pp. 171-174) a long, 
very condensed note on the attitude of the principal Protestant theologians 
of our day in regard to this teaching of St Paul. 

© Non sic tdem effectus causae naturalt et divinae virtutit attributtur, 
guast partim a Deo partim a naturali agenti fiat, sed totus ab utroque secun- 
dum alsum modum (St Thomas, Contra Gentes, III, lxx).—Deus est gut 
operatur in nobts velle et operari ; certum est nos facere cum facimus, sed thle 


factt ut factamus, praebendo vires efficactssimas voluntati (St Augustine, 
De gratia et lib. arbet., 16). 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 85 


granted, the counsel to fear is here only secondary, and the 
emphasis of the discourse falls on the words: “ Work out 
your salvation.’’ Such is the profound but perfectly con- 
sistent thought of St Paul. 


2. What God works in time he resolved to do from all 
eternity. The history of redemption is not unrolled before 
him like a panorama, which he contemplates while taking 
part in it, but like a vast drama the machinery of which he 
sets in motion, the events of which he combines, and the 
ending of which he prepares. St Paul frequently refers to 
this divine plan which he calls the “ eternal purpose, before 
the formation of the world ’’ ; and he sums it up magnificently 
in a passage whose lyrical tone and rhythmical charm remind 
us of a canticle or a hymn: 


(Verse 3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; 


A. Who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in 
Christ ; 
(4) as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, 
that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity ; 


B. (5) who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children 
through Jesus Christ unto himself, 
according to the good pleasure of his will, 
(6) unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath graced 
us in the Beloved, 
(7) in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission 
of sins, 
according to the riches of his grace. 
which he hath shed abundantly on us, 
in all wisdom and understanding. 


C. (9) that he might make known unto us the mystery of his will, 
according to his good purpose formed in him, 

(10) in the dispensation of the fulness of times, 
to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, 

(a) (11) in him in whom we, the first to hope in Christ, were made heirs, 
predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all 

things, according to the counsel of his will, 
(12) to be unto the praise of his glory; 


(4) (13) in him in whom you also, after you had heard the word of truth, 
the gospel of your salvation, and also believed in it, 
were signed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 
(14) the pledge of our inheritance, 
unto the [full] redemption of those whom he has acquired, unto 
the praise of his glory. 


* Eph. i, 3-14. The different parts of this text are explained later in detail. 
For the moment it is a question only of taking a general view of them. It is 
usually divided into two sections, enumerating the blessings mentioned in 
verse 3, first in the order of intention (4-6), then in the order of execution 
(7-14). But a mere reading is sufficient for us to see that this division is 
faulty, for the order of intention and the order of execution are everywhere 


86 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The theological notions accumulated in this passage would 
require a long commentary. For the moment it is sufficient 
to bring out the three principal ideas: to God alone are due 
the glory and the initiative of our salvation: predestination, 
election, remission of sins, the bestowal of grace, heavenly 
blessings in the widest sense, all are derived from him.—All 
this, both in the order of execution and in that of intention, 
is done in view of Christ, ‘‘ the well-beloved Son.’’—Finally, 
the order of execution is unrolled through the centuries, 
according to the order of intention conceived by God from 
eternity. 

Before investigating closely the mystery of the divine plan, 
it is well to define the concepts of predestination, election, 
and foreknowledge. The word predestination is not biblical, 
but the word to predestinate appears five times in St Paul in 
the following passages : 


closely mingled. In examining the long phrase, we see that it turns on three 
participles: 6 evAoyjaas (3), mpoopicas (5), and yrwpicas (9), directly or 
indirectly dependent on the doxology, evAoynrds (etn or €orw being under- 
stood). This gives us an excellent division: Blessed be God (A) because he 
hath dlessed us conformably to his eternal election, (B) because he hath 
predestined us to grace and hath realized in us the effect of this predestination, 
(C) because he hath made known to us the mystery of his redeeming plan 
and hath executed it (a) first in the Jews, (6) then in the Gentiles. The two 
subdivisions which are connected with the third part are clearly indicated 
by the construction : (2) verse 11 (€v @), (4) verse 13 (ev &). 

An important question from an exegetical point of view, but especially 
from a grammatical one, is to know whether the three participles evAoyjoas, 
mpoopicas and yvwpicas are co-ordinated or subordinated—that is, whether 
they are all directly dependent on edAoynros 6 Beds, or whether the first one 
alone depends on it, and the other two on the sentence which precedes them. 
M. Coppieters (La doxologie de la lettre aux Ephéstens, in Revue 6201., 
1909, pp. 74-88) defends the former opinion, and he maintains also, at least 
as being more probable, the view that €v dydmy is to be connected with 
mpooptaas, and év mdon gogia Kat ppovjce. with yrvwpicas. The great 
majority of both ancient and modern commentators are of the contrary 
opinion, and it seems with good reason. It is less a matter of peremptory 
demonstration than of exegetical tact. It seems clear that rpoopicas depends on 
efeAdEaro, and that therefore it is necessary to translate ‘‘ after having pre- 
destined us”’ or “in predestining us.’ Similarly, everyone will agree that 
the words év mday codig cat dpovycer are better suited (to say nothing more) 
- to the knowledge of man than to the knowledge of God, and that it is then 
necessary to refer them to ézepicoevoev eis Huds and not to yrwpicas. Con- 
sequently yvwpicas explains the manner, the object and the origin of the 
knowledge which God gives us so liberally. 

But grammatical construction is one thing, the march and progress of 
thought is another: grammatically, the two participles mpoopicas and yrwpicas 
are subordinated to what precedes them ; logically, they introduce a new 
development and the description of a new blessing. This gives to the style 
more freedom of movement and life, but makes the translation much harder. 

Th. Innitzer (Der Hymnus tm Epheserbriefe, 1, 3-14, in the Zettschrift 
fiir kath. Theol., 1904, pp. 612-621) has proposed a strophic division, based 
upon the repetition of a sort of refrain, ets €rawov ddéns, in verses 6, 12 and 
14. Although it is possible to think of strophes in prose, few exegetes will 
adopt the practice. Form is thus too often sacrificed to substance and thought 
to expression. 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 87 


We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, 
which God gredestinated before the world unto our glory. 

For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be made conformable 
to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many 
brethren. 

And whom hé predestined, them he also called, and whom he called, 
them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should 
be holy and unspotted in his sight, by predestinating us unto the adoption 
of children through Jesus Christ. 

In whom also we have received our share [of heritage], being pre- 
destinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things 
according to the counsel of his will, that we may be unto the praise of 
his glory, we who before hoped in Christ. 


From all these passages it appears that the act by which 
God predestinates is very comprehensive. It is an eternal 
act, since it exists before all ages and is synchronous with or 
logically anterior to election, which is itself anterior to the 
foundation of the world. It is also an absolute act, and like- 
wise an efficacious one in proportion as it is absolute, for it 
is the result of the ‘‘ counsel’? or ‘‘ purpose’’ of God. More- 
over, it is a sovereignly free act, for it takes place according 
to the purpose of him who worketh all things by the counsel 
of his will; it does not therefore, strictly speaking, find its 
origin in anything done by man, although it can have, as its 
raison d’étre, a condition dependent on God. The divine acts 
succeed one another in the following order: foreknowledge, 
predestination, vocation, justification, glorification, the first 
two belonging to the order of intention, the last three to the 
order of execution. Predestination is, therefore, logically 
preceded by prescience: ‘‘ those whom he foreknew he also 
predestinated ”’ ; for it is in the nature of things that the act 
of will follows the act of intelligence and does not precede it. 
Finally, God predestines man to a favour, or a favour to 
man, but this favour is never directly eternal glory. 

While predestination belongs only to the order of intention, 
election comprises also the order of execution. It adds to 
predestination or to the efficacious call an idea of favour with 
respect to those who are predestinated or efficaciously called, 
and an idea of predilection with respect to God who pre- 
destines or calls. A sort of pleonasm sometimes occurs to 
accentuate this twofold idea: ‘‘ The Lord thy God hath 
chosen thee out of all the nations to be his special people.”’ 
If all men were predestinated, they would not be elected in 
the peculiar sense employed in Scripture. Consequently, pre- 
destination does not necessarily presuppose election, but 
election necessarily presupposes predestination : ‘‘ God hath 
blessed us with every kind of spiritual blessings, in heavenly 
places in Christ, as he chose us in him before the foundation 


* 1 Cor. ii, 7 ; Rom. viii, 29, 30; Eph. v, 5,14. Topredestinatze is used also 
in Acts iv, 28, in the sense of to ‘‘ decree.”’ 


88 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his 
sight by predestinating us (or having predestinated us) to be 
his children by adoption through Jesus Christ, according to 
the good pleasure of his will.’ Like predestination, election 
is eternal, since it exists in the divine decree before the 
creation of the world. It takes place ‘‘ in Christ,’’ in view 
of his merits and not independently of him, as Cajetan inter- 
prets it for all the saints and, as Catharin thinks, for a class 
of elect souls. It has for its object a ‘‘ holy and unspotted 
life before God’’; it has not, therefore, for a direct and 
immediate aim eternal glory. Finally, it is the source of 
spiritual blessings, for the order of execution is conformable 
to (xaOds) the order of intention. In the passage which has 
just been cited, election is indeed connected with the order of 


‘ > 


6 evAoyjoas Hpads ev mdop edrAoylg mvevparixy €v rois emoupaviots ev Xpiorg, 

B. (4) xabds éfedrdgaro tas ev avt@ mpd xaraBodAjs Kéopov, elvar ipyas 
dylous Kal dydpous xaTevwmiov abrod ev dydrp, 

C. (5) mpoopicas tyds eis viobectar Sa "Ingod Xpiorob eis avrdv, xara ri 
eddoxlay Tot OeArjparos avrod, 

D. (6) eis Exawov Sdéns ris xdpiros abrob Fs éexapirwoe jyds ev rp 
hyammpery. ee 

Without troubling ourselves with difficulties of detail, we must first try to 
follow the line of thought. The principal idea is expressed in verse 3: 
‘‘ Blessed be God who hath blessed us.’”” The Apostle then remembers that 
these blessings, conferred in time, correspond to the eternal plan of election 
(verse 4, xaws éfeAéfaro). He explains this plan by the kindred idea of 
eternal predestination (verse 5: mpooploas muds). He concludes by stating 
clearly the finality of the divine plan which is the glory of God (verse6). It will 
be noticed that each of these acts is related to Christ : the blessings 7” Chrest 
(év Xpiors), election #2 him (€v adr@), predestination to the adoption of 
children through Jesus Christ (dia *Inoob Xpiorod), the grace conferred 
upon us in his beloved Son (€& 7@ jyamnpévw); the regson of which is that 
the dominating thought of the Epistle is Christ considered as the centre of 
unity of all the faithful. 

A. The blessings which God pours out upon us are: (a) very varied in 
their manifestations (¢€v mdop);—(4) but they are all of the spiritual order 
(xvevparix#) because they come from the Holy Spirit and belong to the 
domain of the spirit ;—(c) they are given us in Christ (€v Xpior@), in so far 
as we are united to him and are only one with him ;—(d) they are in heavenly 
places (€v rots émoupaviois) by their origin and destination.—Notice the 
connection: evAoynrés . . . 6 evAoyjoas. The blessings of man are to 
ascend towards God in proportion as the blessings of God descend towards 
man ; but while man blesses only in words, God blesses in acts. 

B. Election, whence the blessings proceed, is: (a) before the foundation 
of the world (mpé xaraBoAjs xéopov), an expression which designates eternity 
(John xvii, 24; 1 Pet. i, 20);—(8) it takes place in Christ (é€v atv@), and 
consequently it is neither logically anterior to the decree of the incarnation, 
nor independent of this decree ;—(c) it has for its direct object our sanctifica- 
tion (elvar 7yads dylous, xrA.), and by this sanctification the acquisition of 
heavenly glory. 

C. Predestination is: (a2) not an tmmedtate destination to eternal glory, 
but to filial adoption (eis vio#eciav) and, through the state of sonship, to 
the celestial heritage ;—(4) the sonship, the direct object of the predestina- 
tion, is through Jesus Christ (Sia "Inoot Xpiorod) as a meritorious cause, 
and in him (els adrdv) because we become children by adoption only by 


1 A. Eph. i, 3. EdAoyntds 6 Beds xal warnp rob Kuplov jypav *Inoot Xpicrob, 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 89 


intention ; but everywhere else in St Paul it is the order of 
execution which it concerns. Then election is confounded 
with the efficacious call and all the faithful are named elect: 
‘““Labour,’’ says St Peter, ‘‘to make your calling and 
election sure.’’? ‘‘T endure all things for the sake of the 
elect that they also may be saved,’’ says St Paul.? 

If predestination is logically subsequent to prescience and 
is made plain by it, it is all the more necessary to say this 
of election, which is logically subsequent to or at least 
synchronous with predestination. God first knows, and then 
predestines and elects according to his wisdom. Neverthe- 
less, although prescience precedes and predestination follows, 
there is not a relation of causality between these two acts. 
In other words, God does not predestinate man to faith 
because God foresees that he will believe: neither faith nor 
the prevision of faith can be the cause of the predestination, 
Since, on any hypothesis, the prevision of faith presupposes 
the prevision of grace freely offered. On the other hand, it 
cannot be strictly said that we believe because we are pre- 
destinated to believe, for the prevision of faith is logically 
previous to predestination. Predestination is only one 
particular aspect of supernatural providence, just as God’s 
prescience is only one particular aspect of his omniscience. 
Now it is easy to understand that the prevision of a free 
act—that is to say, its vision in the future, is just as little 
contrary to liberty as its vision in the present; that the act 
thus foreseen comes to pass infallibly, yet not by necessity ; 
and that prescience, therefore, effects no change in the course 
of events and proves only the infinite perfection of an intelli- 
gence destined by its very nature to perceive all truth. 


3. In general, the redeeming plan has our earth for its: 
horizon, and comprises only the human race. Sometimes, 





being united to and associated with the Son. Observe the force of the 
compound verb in the middle voice (€éeAéfaro) : he has chosen us for himself 
(dear, middle voice) from amongst several others (é€). 

D. One of God’s aims (eis) in predestinating us to the adoptive sonship 
in Jesus Christ was the brilliant and glorious manifestation of his grace. 
The expression is very energetic. God wills his grace to be recognized, 
-admired and praised (ets €mawov) by men: and not his grace only, but “ the 
glory of his grace’’ (86£s rijs xdpiros abrod), his triumphant grace. This 
grace is “given us in the beloved Son” (& 76 jyamnuévw), and the only 
point is to know whether this is a question of objective grace, that which is 
in God and is the principle of his blessings, or of subjective grace, that which 
is in us and is the form of justification and sanctification. Catholics (St 
Thomas, Estius, Corn. a Lapide, Bisping, etc.) advocate in general the 
second, which the Fathers also assume (Chrysostom and the Greek commen- 
tators : éxapitwoey = émepacrovs émoingev) and the Council of Trent (Sess., vi, 
cap. 7). Several Protestant exegetes are of the same opinion. 

e2Petsis 10: *62sTimkii; 10. 

* On prescience, election, and predestination, see Vol. I, pp. 433-7. 


90 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


however, the prospect widens out and the divine plan com- 
prehends the universality of beings, making the whole of 
creation converge towards Christ : 


That in all things he may hold the primacy : because in him it hath 
pleased (the Father) that all fulness should dwell; and through him to 
reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of 
his cross, both as to the things that are on earth and the things that are 
in heaven. 


The dominant idea of the passage, as well as that of the 
entire Epistle, is the primacy of Christ. He is to be first in 
all because all fulness dwells in him. Let us give to this 
expression its broadest meaning, since St Paul does not think 
it expedient to limit it. It will then be the fulness of being 
as well as the fulness of graces. In order to have the primacy 
in everything, Christ must be without a peer in the two 
orders of grace and nature. And this primacy shines forth 
prominently in the fact that, through his mediation, God re- 
conciles and pacifies all things. God does not reconcile them 
to himself, but reconciles them between themselves through 
Christ, by directing them towards him, as to their final end, 
and by making them converge towards him, as to their 
common centre. We have no right to refuse its proper value 
to the particle compounded with the verb to reconcile, which 
is that of a return to a previous state of concord before the 


1 Col. i, 19-20. Cf. Lightfoot, Colossians. 


19. Ort €v adt@ evdddxnoev (A) 19. guia in ipso complacutt, 
may TO TANPwWUA KATOLKHOAL omnem plenitudinem inhabttare, 

20. Kai &’ avtovd amoxaraAAa£at (B) 20. e¢ per eum reconctliare 
ra mavra eis abTov, omnta tn tpsum, 
eipnvorrotnaas d1a TOU alparos (C) pacificans per sanguinem 
Tov aTaupod avrod, d' avrod, cructs ejus, 
Etre Ta emt THS yIs (D) stve guae tn terrts 
eire Ta €v Tots ovpavois. stve quae tn coelis sunt. 


(2) The subject of the phrase can be only God, named in verse 15, and, 
moreover, easy to understand with a verb like evdddxyoev. To make Christ 
the subject is to create inextricable confusion without any motive for so 
doing. The adoption of wav ro wAjpwyua as the subject is still more arbitrary. 
For how can we then explain the participle eipyvomoijcas in the masculine ? 

(4) The signification of nav ro mAjpwya is not exactly that of wav ro 
mAnpwyua tHS Gedrynros (Col. ii, 9), and is not to be restricted to the special 
sense of a plenitude of graces (cf. John i, 14); it is at the same time the 
plenitude of being and of spiritual gifts. 

(c) All the personal pronouns refer to Christ, 8’ avtod marking his media- 
tory action, ¢v adr@ the moral cause, es adrév the final cause. If, in this 
last case, Paul had had God in view, as certain exegetes think, he would have 
employed the reflective form, ets €avrév, much more necessary here to avoid 
a misunderstanding than in 2 Cor. v, 18, 19. Moreover, when he wishes to 
express reconciliation with God he always uses the dative (Rom. v, Io; 
2 Cor. v, 18, 19, 20), never the accusative with eis. 

(2) The verb eipnvoroetv, extremely rare, is found only in Prov. x, Io, 
where it is intransitive, and in Stobaeus (Zc/. phys., i, 52) where it is trans- 
itive. The transitive meaning of to paczfy is perfectly admissible, since there is 
given us the analogy of the similar compounds odomoteiv and Aoyomotetv con: 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER QI 


appearance of sin. Henceforth all things recover their 
primitive unity, since they all come back under the hegemony 
of Christ. 

The condition or resultant of the reconciliation of beings 
is their pacification. Paul does not speak of a mutual pacifica- 
tion of the things of heaven with those of earth—-the expres- 
sion which he uses is opposed to it—but speaks of a general 
pacification of all beings among themselves, whether on 
earth or in heaven. All beings are pacified as well as re- 
conciled in Christ, who is their centre of gravity and their 
point of convergence. 

In the parallel passage the field of vision remains as wide, 
but the union of all beings under the sceptre of the incarnate 
Word is marked in it by a still more definite characteristic. 


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . who 
hath made known unto us the mystery of his will (according to his 
ood pleasure, which he hath purposed in him, in the dispensation of the 
ulness of times) to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven 
and on earth.! 


The object of the mystery or divine secret is expressed in 
Greek by a compound word which has given rise to different 
but not incongruous interpretations. The Latin commenta- 


structed with an accusative, the first by Aristotle (Rhetor., 1, i, 2), the second 
by Thucydides (vi, 38). It is, therefore, natural to regard the clause D as 
dependent on C, and to translate it pactfying . . . what ts on the earth and 
what ts in heaven, instead of making C a parenthesis, beyond which the 
sentence B would continue. This construction is very simple, was adopted 
by Chrysostom, and eliminates every difficulty. 

(e) Those who understand by amoxaraAAdfat a reconciliation wzth God 
ought to understand by ra wavra only rational creatures. Then the things 
on earth (ra emt tis yps) would denote men, and the things in heaven (ra ev 
rots ovpavots) the angels. There would remain to be explained how Christ 
reconciles the angels with God. 

1 Eph.i,9,10. Cf. Haupt, Meyers Kommentar. 


9. ywwpicas uty To pvoTHpiov rod (A) 9. Utnotum faceret nobts sacra- 
feAnpatos avrod, mentum voluntatts suac, 

KaTa THY EvdoKlav avTod, HY mpo€BeTo (B) secundum beneplacttum efus, 
év atT@ guod proposutt in eo, 

10. €ls otkovopiavy tod mAnpwyaros (C) 10. tn dispensatione plenttudinis 
TY Kalpor, temporum, 

dvaxedadradcacba Ta mavTa ev TH (D) tustaurare omnia in Christo, 
Xptora, 

Ta €mi Tots OUpavois Kal TA Emi TIS (E) guae tn coelis et quae in terra 
yjs. sunt. 


(a) Construction of the phrase —Grammatically, the clause C could 
depend either on yrwpicas or on pvorypiov or on avaxepadawwoac8ai or on 
mpoéGero ev avt@. The last construction is indisputably the most natural 
and satisfying and also the one most commonly accepted. The meaning will 
be therefore: ‘‘ God formed in himself this plan with a view to the dis- 
pensation which the fulness of times brings.’”’ In its turn, the clause D can 
depend on 76 pvornptov rob GeArjuaros avrod or on evdoxiay or on mpo€vero, 
or may be only an explanation of the clause C. The first hypothesis is the 


g2 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


tors following the Vulgate and the ancient version, readily 
adopt the meaning suggested by the verb instaurare or 
restaurare. Thus Ambrosiaster writes: ‘‘ Every creature in 
heaven and on earth is restored by the knowledge of Christ 
to the state in which it was created.’’ And St Augustine sees 
this twofold restoration effected: in heaven, when the void 
made by the fall of the angels is filled by the elect ; on earth, 
when those who are predestinated, freed from the corruption 
of sin, are invested with eternal glory.' This exegesis is of 
an irreproachable theology, but of a doubtful philology ; for 
St Paul does not seem to have in view rational beings only, 
and a return to the primitive state by the reparation of sin 
does not express his whole thought. : 
Tertullian, expressly approved by St Jerome, translated 
the Greek word by recapitulare.* That is, indeed, the sense 
of the Greek, and St Irenzus explains it by saying that all 
things are summed up or epitomized in Christ.2 This can 
be understood in three ways: in the ontological sense Jesus 
Christ, God and man, epitomizes in some way the whole 


best one: avaxedaAratwoaoba: is then the content of the mystery or the divine 
secret which has been revealed to us, and the sentences B and C, qualifying A 
(not yrwpicas, but pvaor#prov), form a sort of explanatory parenthesis. The 
meaning is: “God has revealed to us the mystery of his will (conformably 
to the benevolent design which he conceived in order to execute it in the 
fulness of times) to re-establish all things in Christ.” 

(6) Meaning of avaxepadadcac8a.—This word comes from xeddAatov 
(a neuter adjective, taken substantively, from xe¢adaios, ‘relating tothe head”’), 
which signifies ‘what is principal or capital’’—for example, the principal 
person in a group, or the capital point of an affair; then by extension the 
capital, contrasted with the interest, or the summary contrasted with its 
fuller details. The simple verb xefaAawév meant “to sum up, to negotiate 
Jor capital sums,’ sometimes to “ depict in general features,” oftener “‘ to 
sum up (the parts),’’ and, inthe passive, ‘‘ toamount to (so much)”; the com- 
pound davaxedadatoby was frequently used to denote the rhetorical procedure 
(dvaxefaraiwas, recapitulatio) of summing up a discourse by a final re- 
capitulation. From this came the meaning to “‘ repeat” (Protevang. Jacobt, 
xili, 1). But these different meanings do not harmonize very well with our 
text, and Chrysostom’s explanation is clearly preferable, if it can be justified. 
Now we believe it to be irreproachable from the philological point of view. 
It is true that xe¢ddAaov, which sometimes signifies the head of fishes, 
vegetables, etc., is never used to designate the head of the human body, but 
it signifies in popular speech the ¢op or summit, and is employed in this sense 
both for persons and things. Thus the principal philosophers are ra xefdAata 
t&v pabnudtwy (Lucian, Pescat., 14), and the commander-in-chief is 76 
xedadatov tod mroA€uou (Appian, Czv., v, 10). Why should not dvaxedadauoiv 
Ta Tavra ev TH Xptor@ signify ‘to give a crowning touch, ahead (not xedady 
but «xefdAatov) to all things in the person of Christ,” in other words, “ to place 
Christ on the summit of all things,” as a principle of unity? The middle 
voice is easily explained by the divine intention and by the interest which 
God takes in exalting his Son above all things. 

1 Augustine, Enchirid., vi; Ambrosiaster, Commentary. 

* Contra Marcion.,v,17; but De Monogamia 5 (reciprocare). 

* Haereses, III, xvi, 6; xviii, 1 ; xxi, 9-10; IV, xl, 3; V, xx, 2, etc 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 93 


creation, the world of spirits and the world of bodies; in the 
soteriological sense Christ epitomizes the whole scheme of 
redemption, since the prophecies all have in him their fulfil- 
ment, and all the work of God tends towards him as to its 
ultimate goal; from the representative point of view, Christ 
can epitomize all beings endowed with reason, as Adam com- 
prised in himself the whole of humanity, of which he was the 
father. 

If these considerations please the grammarians, they do 
not wholly satisfy the exegete. It is true that Christ realizes 
in his person the prophecies and metaphors of the old 
Covenant, and that his double nature contains admirably 
the highest qualities of all beings; but the general affirmation 
of our text is not the less limited by it in a very arbitrary 
manner, and this does not agree well with the recognized 
object of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is to present 
Christ as a principle of universal union. Hence the best 
interpreters restrict Paul’s thought still more, saying, for 
example, with St John Chrysostom: ‘‘ God has given Christ 
to be the Head of all beings, both angels and men. In this 
way the union, the perfect connection, is formed when all 
things are grouped under only one head and receive from on 
high an indissoluble bond. . . .”’ The sin of the first man, 
we are told by St Paul, had produced throughout the whole 
of nature disorder, a division and a conflict of hostile 
tendencies. Jesus Christ re-establishes concord there—or 
at least brings harmony into it—because he is the natural 
chief of all rational beings and the dominating centre of the 
material creation. 

We perceive now the close relations between our two texts, 
the first reading of which seemed to reveal some divergences. 
In both the plan of redempticn, extending beyond our sphere, 
embraces both earth and heaven: in both Christ is a mediator 
of peace and an instrument of union, and he is so as man, 
in the fulness of the times; in both there is indicated—or 
insinuated—the return to a primitive state of harmony and 
concord; finally, in both the cosmic role of Christ serves as 
a prelude to the reconciliation of the pagans with God and to 
the reunion of the Jews and Gentiles in one and the same 
mystical body. 

Even as man, Jesus Christ has, therefore, a kind of cosmic 
role; he is the head of the angels and has dominion over all 
creation. If we think of the disorder produced by sin in the 
entire work of God and of the harmony which the presence 
of Christ restores to it, we see that this cosmic role is in some 
way closely related to soteriology.' It is a sort of cosmical 


? Allcreatures participate ¢o a certain degree in the blessings of redemption. 
The glorification of man sheds its influence morally over the whole universe. 
For this idea see Rom. viii, 20, 21. 


94 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


reaction of the incarnation and a sudden enlargement of the 
horizon contemplated by the Apostle, whose gaze does not 
usually go beyond the salvation of men. 


ITJ—-PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS 


1. The First Stage of Humanity. 2. The Era of Promise. 3. The Régime 
of the Law. 4. The Elements of the World. 5. The Fulness of the 
Times. 


1. The plan of salvation having been once decided, was it 
necessary to defer its execution? Since man cannot rise 
again alone, of what use is it to let him make a trial of his 
impotence? What glory can a delay, fatal to so many 
victims, bring to God? It is said in reply that the mission 
of Christ, having a retroactive effect, the value of his redeem- 
ing death is therefore imparted to previous generations. As 
there were righteous men before Jesus Christ, and as they 
could have been righteous only by the universal Mediator of 
grace, the saints of the ancient Covenant are the anticipatory 
results of Calvary. But, if the Apostle authorizes us to draw 
these conclusions, he does not draw them himself. He is 
content to appeal to the ‘‘ purpose’’ of God which unrolls 
itself in “‘ the course of ages’’;! at most, he invokes the 
providential necessity of letting the times come to their 
fulness and of allowing the human race to reach its 
majority.” It is a law of nature to advance by degrees to 
the stage of perfection, and man comes to maturity only by 
passing through childhood and youth. God has not disdained 
to adapt himself to these harmonious conditions, because 
they make his mercy and wisdom still more evident. He 
will, therefore, lead man to his ultimate goal by four succes- 
sive stages: the law of nature, the time of the promises, the 
period of the Covenant, and the era of grace. Thus 
providence leads humanity onward by progressive degrees. 
This truly biblical idea, with which two of the most beautiful 
books that ever issued from the hands of men were inspired, 
is what it is agreed to call, in St Paul, the philosophy of 
history, and which could be more justly named his theology 
of providence. 

The creation of the first human pair opens the religious 
history of humanity. St Paul does not tell us what would 
have been man’s condition on the earth if he had not sinned. 
He does not like, any more than do his colleagues, to explore 
the nebulous regions of possibilities and hypotheses, and he 
rarely directs his gaze beyond the actual horizon. It is 


? Eph. iii, 11: xara mpdbeow trav aidvev. 

* Compare the expressions 76 mAjpwya rod xpdvov (Gal. iv, 4), 76 Ar puy- 
ua Tav Kaip@yv (Eph. i, 10), and reread the famous passage about the role of 
the schoolmaster, tutors and stewards (Gal. iii, 23-iv, 7). 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 95 


sufficient for him to refer us to the recital of Genesis, 
attributing man’s loss of the divine friendship, death, and 
the inclination to evil to Adam’s disobedience. He makes no 
allusion to a primitive revelation; for the revelation by which 
the pagans perceived the attributes of God in the mirror of 
the sensible world is a natural revelation, inherent in man’s 
intelligence,! and the knowledge which they had of the 
eternal law was only the verdict of their conscience and their 
reason. The solicitude, of which the pagans were con- 
stantly the object, even in their worst errors, that solicitude 
which had for its immediate aim to incite them to seek God, 
and for its final motive to lead them to him,* could be called 
supernatural providence only if it had been first proved that 
there is none other in the present order. It is by virtue of 
the same providence that God keeps them, as well as the 
Jews, under the dominion of sin. He intends to show mercy 
to them all. 

If it is said elsewhere that God ‘‘in past ages let all the 
Gentiles walk in their own ways,’’> that he delivered them 
over to their perverse instincts and their depraved senses,° 
this cannot be understood as a total and absolute abandon- 
ment, since it is affirmed in the same passages that God has 
not ceased to bear witness of himself by his benefits,’ that he 
remains the God of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews,® and 
that he intends to profit by their misery and even by their 
wickedness to draw them from the abyss.* The allegory of 
the good olive and the wild olive’? shows clearly that the 
Jews had received from the heavenly Gardener special care, 
but does not allow us to conclude that the wild olive had 
been deprived of all care. On the contrary, the natural 
education of the Gentiles sometimes approached the super- 
natural education with which the chosen race was favoured. 
In both cases the moral and religious institutions which 
formed a prelude to the Gospel, however different they were, 
are ranged under the same concept of elementary doctrines, 
similar to an alphabet which the world, still in its infancy, 
was trying to decipher." 

The preparation of the Gentiles for faith may appear 
chiefly negative; but the spread of Christianity in pagan 
countries proves that it was none the less efficacious on that 
account. The contempt inspired by the absurd and indecent 
crowd of gods in the Greco-Roman pantheon, the disgust 
produced in the long run by unbridled corruption, the satiety 
of vice which little by little took possession of virtuous souls, 


1 Rom.i, 20. See Vol. I, pp. 194-202. 


* Rom. ii, 14, 15. 8 Acts xvil, 26, 27. 
“ Rom. xi, 32; Gal. iil, 22. 5 Acts xiv, 16. 

6 Rom. i, 28. a PA Cte tive 1 7 

§ Rom. iil, 29. ®* Rom..v, 20, 21. 


10 Rom. xi, 24. ral iv, 0 00,11; 5. 


96 - THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


the intellectual confusion brought about by the utter failure 
of the philosophies, the aspiration towards a nobler religious 
ideal, the awakening of conscience, the vague suspicion of 
the unknown God, were all so many silent preachers, which 
cleared the way for the heralds of the Gospel. 


2. Between the state of nature and the régime of the Law 
is inserted the age of promise. Its beginning can be sought 
in the first announcement of a redeemer, which was made the 
day after the fall, or in the hope given to Noe after the flood ; 
but we know that the Apostle dates it from Abraham, who 
personifies it. The promise is almost always defined as a 
function of the Law. 


Why then was the Law? -It was added because of transgressions, 
until the seed should come to whom he made the promise, being ordained 
by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one 
but God is one. 





* Gal. ili, 19, 20: Tt odv 6 vdyos; ra&v mapaBdoewy ydpw mpooerébn, dxpis 
dy €8n 76 ordpya & émpyyeArat, Siarayels Sv’ dyyéAwy ev xeipt peotrov. 6 5e 
pealrns évos ovx éarw, 6 5¢ Geos els eorww.—There will arise later on the 
question of the aim and end of the Law, but here we are concerned only 
with its promulgation and with the office of mediator.—Avardacew vdpov is 
not properly to compose or draw up a law, but to give notice of it, to pro- 
mulgate it. Two kinds of agents had concurred in the solemn promulgation 
of the Law: the angels and Moses. For the angels, cf. Deut. xxxiii, 2 
(in the version of the Septuagint: é« Sefiav abrod dyyedou per’ avrod); 
Acts vii, 38 and vii, 53 (€AaBere rdv vdpov eis dtatayds dyydAwy); Heb. ii, 2 
(6 d’ dyyéAwy AaAnOeis Adyos is evidently the Law); Josephus, Antig., XV, 
v, 3; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judentum, vol. i, pp. 309-310 (ridiculous 
stories of the Rabbis).—The name of mediator was the recognized title of 
Moses, Deut. v, 5 (xdyd elorixew dva pécov xupiov xal dvd pécov duc); 
Lev. xxvi, 46; Ex. xxxi, 18; Philo, Vita Mos., iii, 19 (Mangey, i, 160); 
Josephus, Antig., XV, v. 3; Assumptio Mosts (in Fabricius, Cod. Pseudep. 
V.T., vol. i, p. 845: €edoatd pe 6 Beds mpd xataBodijs xdopov elval pe Ths 
diabjxns avrod pecirny); Aboth, by R. Nathan, i, 1 (Legem, quam Deus 
Israelitis dedit, nonnist per manus Mosis dedit) and the texts quoted by 
Schoettgen (Horae, 738). The name of Mediator of the new Covenant, 
given to Jesus by Heb. viii, 6; ix, 15; xii, 24 (cf. Acts vii, 38) presupposes 
that Moses is the mediator of the ancient one. The mediator of whom 
St Paul speaks in reference to the Law is, therefore, certainly Moses. If the 
word yeatrys has not the definite article, it is because Paul does not emphasize 
the person of the mediator, but his quality of mediator. It is necessary to 
translate “‘ by means of a mediator,’”’ who is, indeed, Moses, but could be 
any other person without changing the reasoning of the Apostle, for all his 
argument aims at the meaning of the word mediator. The 8€ (6 8é peoirns, 
verse 20) is not a mere particle of transition ; nor is it adversative or limiting, 
but argumentative and should be translated by now (atgut). The definite 
article in 0 peoirns indicates the kind, the generic notion, the content of the 
idea of mediator (cf. John x, 11 ; 2 Cor. xii, 12); it is no longer the mediator 
Moses, it is the mediator in general, any mediator whomsoever. 

This being settled, the meaning of the mysterious verse 20 can be only 
this : “ Now the mediator is not [mediator] of only one [contracting party] ; 
but God is one only.”” In the promise, God is only one and the promise 
depends only on him ; in the Law, God is not ome only, since there is a mediator. 
Hence, from this point of view, the promise has conditions of stability which 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 97 


This last phrase must be very obscure to have suggested 
hundreds of explanations to the exegetes. However, as 
most of the commentators suppose, contrary to all the 
evidence, that the mediator here is Jesus Christ, and as 
almost all the others pay more attention to the words them- 
selves than to the context, the number of really permissible 
interpretations is reduced remarkably. The mediator of the 
Law is not Jesus Christ, but Moses, and the aim of St Paul is 
not to show the advantage of the Law, but its imperfection 
and its instability. The inferiority of the Law, when com- 
pared with the promise, appears from merely contrasting 
them : the promise is a testament, the Law is a contract; the 
promise is absolute, the Law is conditional; the promise 
comes from God without an intermediary, the Law is promul- 
gated by the mediator ; the promise is confirmed by God with 
an oath, the Law is prepared and transmitted by the 
angels. Consequently, the promise is immutable, the Law 
is susceptible of abrogation; the promise, made with no 
temporal limit, is eternal, the Law, given under the reserva- 
tion of the promise, is transient; the promise pledges the 
fidelity of God absolutely, the Law pledges the fidelity of 
God only in proportion to the fidelity of the people. All this 
may be summed up in the following formula: ‘‘ The media- 
tor,” by his nature, ‘‘ is not a mediator of one’’ contracting 
party. Wherever he comes in, there is a bilateral contract 
which, subordinated to two different wills, can be cancelled; 
Se nn nnn nee ee ee 


the Law has not. This quite simple meaning is adopted by the majority 
of modern commentators, Catholic (Bisping, Cornely, etc.) and Protestant 
(Lightfoot, Perowne, Sieffert, Reuss, etc.). The following is Reuss’s com- 
mentary : ‘‘ Whoever speaks of a mediator speaks of two contracting parties 
and consequently of two wills, which, even while uniting momentarily, can 
at other times be opposed to each other. A law promulgated by mediation 
is therefore always something uncertain and imperfect ; while the promise, 
emanating from God on/y, having his will as its unique source and guarantee, 
is incomparably more certain and therefore more exalted. The Law could 
not therefore in any case be superior to the promises.’ The other exegetes 
mentioned above say the same thing more or less clearly. Several among 
them (Cornely, Sieffert, etc.) try to reconstruct the Apostle’s argument by 
regarding the first as a major, and the second as a minor, proposition, with the 
conclusion understood. Cornely states it thus: Legtslatio per mediatorem 
Moysen data contractum constitutt bilateralem, qui benedictiones condttiont 
legis impletae alligat ; atqut promisstones Abrahae seminique ejus dictae 
utpote contractus unilateralis, benedictiones nullt condttiont alligant ; ergo 
Lex in promissionum locum succedere easque abrogare non potutt. What- 
ever one may think of the soundness of this syllogism, it is better to see 
in our text not an incomplete syllogism, but an antithesis: the Law, given 
by a mediator, is a covenant (Sca0jen in sense of 1')3); the promise, made 
without a mediator, is a testament (S:a9)xn in the usual sense). In the 
consequences to be drawn from this contrast, it is essential to observe that 
St Paul does not propose here to exalt the Law above the promise, but on 
the contrary to make prominent the advantages of the promise in respect 
to the Law. 
ii; 7 


98 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


‘“‘but,’” in the promise, made by God with no restrictions or 
conditions, ‘‘ God is the only one’’ responsible; no one can 
invalidate his irrevocable decision, and he owes it to himself 
not to withdraw it to the detriment of those interested. It 
follows that the Law, coming later than the promises, can 
neither abolish nor modify them; while the promise of God 
Carries in itself its own guarantee. 

St Luke, St Paul, and the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews are the only ones to speak of the promise in its 
technical sense. They understand by it the whole of the 
gracious prospects of the future revealed to the father of the 
faithful for him and for his race: the possession of a 
permanent abode, a progeny more numerous than the stars 
in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert, and, finally, 
above all, a blessing which was to flow out upon ail the 
nations of the earth.1 In the widest sense, the promise 
includes aii the messianic blessings until their complete 
realization in heaven. As the object of it is at the same time 
single and multiple, the sacred authors speak sometimes of 
several promises and at other times of only one ;? but it is 
certain that all the promises have their fulfilment in Jesus 
Christ: ‘‘ It is by virtue of the promise that God has raised 
up to Israel a saviour Jesus . . . for all the promises of 
God are in him. Yea, therefore also [we say] by him Amen 
to the glory of God”’ in praise and thanksgiving. 

Who are the true heirs of the promise? At first sight 
the answer seems an easy one. Is not the possession of the 
promises one of the privileges of Israel?# Were not the 
Gentiles strangers to the promise, and therefore without 
hope?’ Is not Christ the ‘‘ minister of the circumcision 
to [prove] the truth of God, to confirm the promises made 
unto the Fathers?’’* But, on the other hand, the Gentiles, 
when they have become Christians, are fully entitled to be 
co-partners of the promise,’ and the Apostle affirms on 
several occasions that the promise was originally destined 
for them.* In order to solve the contradiction, it is necessary 


* The three principal promises made to Abraham are : that of the promised 
land (Gen. xii, 7 ; xili, 15 ; xv, 18 ; xxvi, 4), that of an innumerable posterity 
(Gen. xii, 2; xiil, 16; xv, 5; xxii, 17), that of the blessings (Gen. xii, 3; 
Xvili, 18; xxii, 18; xxvi, 4).—In the New Testament the promise is often 
referred to Abraham (Rom. iv, 13-16; Gal. iii, 8-9, 16-18; Heb. vi, 15; 
xi, 9; Luke i, 54, 55, 73). The idea nearest to it in the Old Testament is 
Ps. cxiv, 8-9: ‘‘ He hath remembered his covenant for ever . . . which he 
made to Abraham and his oath to Isaac.’”? Again the promise is regarded 
under the form of a covenant (N92). Itis true that between the promise and 


the covenant there are many ielations, which the Greek word diadyKn 
comprises at the same time. C/. Gal. iii, 15-17 ; Heb. ix, 16,117. 

* The promise (Rom. iv, 13, 20; ix, 8,9; Gal. iii, 17, 29; iv, 23-28, etc.); 
the promises (Rom. ix, 4; xv, 8; 2 Cor. i, 20; Gal. iii, 16, 21, etc.). 

#2 Cora 20.; * Rom. ix, 4. 

fo Eph. tier: * Rom. xv, 8. 

Eph sine: * 2 Cor. vii, 1 ; Gal. iv, 28, etc. 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 99 


to discover the principle, according to which the blessings 
bequeathed to Abraham may be distributed and imparted. 
This is the triumph of the dialectician, trained in the subtle- 
ties of the schools. Paul calls attention to three remarkable 
peculiarities in the history of the promise. The promise does 
not extend to all the children of Abraham: it passes first to 
Isaac, with the exclusion of Ishmael, and then to Jacob, with 
the exclusion of Esau.! The principle of this difference is 
that of election, of the free choice of God: the carnal 
posterity will not inherit the blessings, but the spiritual 
posterity. In the second place, the promise made to 
Abraham is universal, since all nations are to be blest in 
him.? The principle of this extension is faith: those who 
shall share the faith of the father of the faithful will be the 
true sons of Abraham. Finally, the promise is collective, for 
it concerns not each one of the’ patriarch’s descendants, but 
his race, his seed.* The principle of this collective relation 
is union with Christ, the unique source of the blessings ; 
the true heirs of Abraham are, therefore, not the Jews but 
Christians, in so far as they form with Christ one and the 
same mystical person, the spiritual lineage of Abraham. 
Thus the promise possesses three characteristics which liken 
it to the Gospel. Like that, it is universal; like that, it is 
based upon faith; like that, it is dependent on grace. The 
promise is the Gospel seen in perspective, and the Gospel is 
the promise realized. 


3. If such are the prerogatives of the promise, does not 
the régime of the Law, instead of being a step forward, mark 
a retrogression in the progress of humanity? This objection 
has occurred to the mind of the Apostle, and he replies to it 
as follows: ‘‘ What then? Do we (Jews) excel them (the 
Gentiles)? No, not entirely.’’* There are two points in 
which the equality exists and in which the Jews cannot boast 
of any privilege: the domination of sin and the mode of 
justification by faith;> but that does not do away with all 
difference. ‘‘ What advantage, then, hath the Jew? Or 
what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. 
First, indeed, because the words of God were committed to 
them.’’® Is it nothing to be the depositaries of the revela- 
tion? Divine revelation is a light for the intelligence and a 
guide for the will. The misuse of a blessing does not 
diminish its value. But the revelation is not all; it is for the 
Jews the origin or the accompaniment of other honorary 
privileges. 

1 Rom. ix, 8. . ® Gal. iii, 8. ® Gal. iii, 16. 

‘ Rom. iii, 9: od mdvrws means non omnino (not wholly) and not negua- 
quam. It is not a total negation, but a restriction. 

8 Gal. ii, 16; Rom. i, 21-24, 30; Rom. iii, 9, 23. 

* Rom. iii, 1,2. See Vol. I, pp. 203-4. 


100 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


They are Israelites ; to whom belongeth the adoption as of children 
and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the 
[legal] service of God and the promises: whose are the fathers and of 
whom, according to the flesh, is born Christ, God over all, blessed for 


ever.! 


These nine prerogatives epitomize their pre-eminence. 
They are Israelites—that is, they bear the name of one of 
the greatest servants of Jehovah; this name, chosen by God 
himself, is not a mere national appellation; it is a glorious 
title, of which the Jews were always proud, which St Paul 
himself lays claim to with pride and does not fear to apply 
to Christians.—As a people specially chosen by God, they 
are children by adoption; God was able to say of them 
through the mouths of the prophets: ‘‘ Israel is my first- 
born son ;’’ this adoption, while collective, is none the less a 
precious source of divine blessings.—Jehovah dwells in the 


2 Rom. ix, 4: 


otrwes etaw "IopanAiras (A) Qut sunt Israeltitae, 

dv 4 viobeaia. (B) quorum adoptio est filiorum, 
Kal 7 Sofa (C) et gloria, 

Kal ai ScvabFjxat (D) et testamentum, 

Kat 7) voyobeoia (E) et legislatio, 

Kat 7 Aatpela (F) et obsequium, 

cal ai érayyeAat, (G) et promissa - 

dv of matépes (H) quorum patres, 

kal e€ dv 6 Xptords. (I) et ex quibus est Christus. 


(A) Zsraelttes. St Paul is proud of this name (2 Cor. xi, 22 ; cf. Gal. ii, 15 ; 
Phil. iii, 3-5), the origin of which is glorious (Gen. xxxii, 28 ; Eccli. xvii, 15 : 
Hepis xupiov “IopayA €orw. Cf. Psalm. Sal., x, 7; xiv, 3; xvii, 50-51; 
Jub., xxxiii, 18, etc.). This name will pass to the Christians (Gal. vi, 16). 

(B) Ex. iv, 22: filtus meus primogenitus Israel. Cf. Deut. xiv, 1; 
xxxil, 6 ; Jer. xxxi, 9; Os. xi, 1. 

(C) The supernatural splendour which at times surrounded the ark of the 
covenant in the desert (Ex. xvi, 10; xxiv, 16; xl, 34) and in the Temple 
(1 Kings viii, 14 ; x, 18; Ezech. i, 28 ; Heb. ix, 5), and which was the visible 
sign of the presence of God in the midst of his people, is called in Hebrew 
My? WID and is translated by 8dfa (gloria). It is the MDW of the 
Rabbis. See Weber, /tidtsche Theol.2, pp. 185-190. 

(D) Instead of the singular testamentum, it should be the plural, for the 
covenants (d:afjKat) were manifold: with Noe (Gen. vi, 18; ix, 9), with 
Abraham (Gen. xv, 18 ; xvii, 2, 7, 9), with Moses (Ex. ii, 24). 

(E) Legzslatio (voyobeoia) denotes the whole of the Law of Moses. It 
forms part of the revelation (Rom. ii, 2 : e/oguia Det), of which the Jews have 
a right to be proud. 

(F) The word obdsegutum translates Aarpeia, which signifies the divine * 
worshtp instituted by Moses by God’s command. Simeon the Just (Pirgé 
Aboth, i, 2) said that the three supports of the world are the Law, divine 
worshtp and charity. 

(G) On the promises, see above, pp. 96-9. 

(H) Their great ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Acts iii, 13; 
vil, 32), were for the Jews a subject of pride, which was fundamentally legiti- 
mate, but excessive in its manifestations. The Apocalypse of Baruch 
(xxi, 24) affirms that the world was created for them. Already Ezechiel 
had reduced these pretensions (xiv, 14) which Jesus Christ never ceased to 
combat (Matt. iii, 8, 9 ; John viii, 33). 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER IO! 


midst of his people and visibly manifests his presence by the 
glory, that supernatural splendour which at times enveloped 
the mercy-seat of the ark and recalled the luminous cloud 
that guided the Israelites across the desert.—Heirs of the 
patriarchs and, like them, an object of special divine favour, 
the Hebrews inherit also the convenants concluded between 
God and the holy men of the past, Noah, Abraham, and 
Moses; and these covenants, which guarantee the faith- 
fulness of God, are for them a pledge of protection and 
assistance.—They alone, among all the nations of the earth, 
possess a Law come down from heaven and transmitted 
through the ministry of angels; if the Torah was a burden 
for them, it was also a supreme distinction: ‘‘ God has not 
acted in the same way towards the other nations and has 
never revealed to them his judgements.’’—Together with the 
Law is revealed also the lawful worship of God, the only 
one agreeable to him, since it is the only one inspired and 
sanctioned by him, the only one which adds to its intrinsic 
worth a figurative signification which elevates and ennobles 
it.—The Hebrews are still in a special sense the retainers of 
the promises made by God to humanity; as these promises 
concern the Messiah, and as the Messiah is to be born among 
them, they have in some way the patrimony of them.—It is 
also for them a title of glory to have descended from these 
patriarchs whom God honoured most with his friendship ; 
the glory of the Father is poured out upon the children, and 
the family shares in the celebrity of each of its members; 
although St Paul combats the exaggerated sentiment of the 
Jews in this respect, he does not dispute its principle: “‘If 
the root is sound, the branches will be equally so.’’—Finally, 
the climax of honour is that of being, according to the flesh, 
kinsmen of Christ, the Messiah, the God-man. 

What distinguishes the Hebrews especially from other 
peoples is that they are the guardians of the revelation and 
have received the Law as their guide. When St Paul speaks 
of the Law, he always means the Mosaic Law; he knows no 
other, although he sometimes gives by analogy the name of 
law to other moral forces. Now—and on this point the 
Apostle never changed his opinion—the Law is good, just, 
noble, holy, spiritual, and given by God. It is not absolutely 
perfect, in the sense that nothing better could be imagined, 
but it is excellent, since it is summed up in what is the most 
excellent thing in the world—love; and one cannot impute 
to it the abuses of which it has been the occasion. Its im- 
perfection appears only if it is compared with something still 
more perfect, or if one thinks of the troubles which arise 
from it.!_ This consideration can be formed from four points 


1 On the role, the sanctity and the imperfection of the Law, see 
Vol. I, pp. 182-4, 224-33. 


102 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of view: the historical, the psychological, the metaphysical, 
and the theological. 

Historically, the promise made to the patriarchs is absolute 
and antecedent to the Law: the Law can, therefore, neither 
annul nor limit it; nor can justification, which is dependent 
on the promise, be dependent on the Law. The latter has 
not cured the Jews of their passions, and has opposed to the 
flood of evil in the world only a feeble dyke.—More could 
not be expected from it. For, after all, what is a law? It is 
at once a light and a barrier; a light that shows us the way 
and a barrier that forbids us to depart from it; a light in- 
opportune for an irresolute will, a barrier provocative to a 
perverse will.’ The law brings a new obligation, but without 
new assistance; it can, therefore, only manifest, aggravate, 
and increase sin.2—This is a matter of common experience. 
Man, in presence of a law, experiences instincts of rebellion, 
and feels at the same time that the aid offered to the law by 
his reason is not a sufficient counterpoise. He does not do 
the good which he loves, and he does commit the evil that he 
abhors. If he does not at all understand this contradictory 
phenomenon, he at least has no trouble in verifying it. He 
perceives also that the law is not the cause of evil, but only 
the occasion of it; but even so, conscious of the insufficiency 
of the law, he seeks assistance outside of it, and turns 
towards mercy.*—-Here comes in the theological principle. 
One could conceive another order of providence in which the 
Law would justify and, on this hypothesis, ‘‘ justice would 
truly be by the Law.’’* But in the system now prevailing 
man’s salvation depends on grace, and man has no right to 
boast on that account.® Now, if the Law alone justified, 
man could boast of having performed by his own strength a 
magnificent deed of valour; but in that case we should have 
no more need of Christ, and ‘‘ Christ would have died in 
vain.’’® 

While declaring that the Law is ‘‘ incapable of justifying,”’ 
Paul, nevertheless, says that ‘‘ those who have observed the 
Law shall be justified.’’?7 He assures us that the Law was 
given ‘‘ unto life,’’ and he asserts that it was superadded ‘‘ to 
increase transgressions.’’® Is there not a flagrant contradic- 
tion in these statements? Not at all. The Law by itself is 
incapable of justifying, but the Jews were never left with the 
Law only. In giving the Law to the Hebrews, who were 
already the depositaries of the promises made to Abraham, 
God wished to confer upon them supernatural life, not by 
the Law alone (which was incapable of doing that), but by 


’ Rom. vii, 7-9. ? Gal. iii, 19 ; Rom. v, 20. 

§ Rom. vii, 5-25. “*Galtiliar: 

® Gal. vi, 14; Rom. iii, 27 ; iv, 2; Eph. ii, 9. 

® Gal. ii, 21. ” Gal. iii, 21 (cf. Rom. viii, 3). 
8 


Rom. vii, 10 and Gal. iii, 19. 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 103 


grace superadded to the Law, as an external and independent 
principle. When God saw that his first intention was frus- 
trated by the fault of the Jews, he sanctioned the accom- 
plished fact and wished that sin might abound through the 
Law in order to make grace more abound.* The two 
finalities are not contradictory because they move along 
different planes. 

It is evident from what precedes that the doctrine of St 
Paul in relation to the Mosaic Law is one of great complexity. 
Let us try to indicate its principal features : 

As an expression of the divine will, the Law is good, holy, 
and spiritual ;? but, considered in itself, it is only a light 
illuminating the intelligence without strengthening the will, 
only a barrier provoking a spirit of revolt without efficaciously 
repressing it ; it is, therefore, for a corrupt being an accidental 
cause of transgressions, and it is in this sense that it increases 
sin and engenders wrath.? 

From the historical point of view, the Law came after the 
gratuitous, absolute, universal, and eternal promise, which it 
could neither annul, supplant, limit, complete, nor restrain.* 
It was, therefore, by its nature temporary and local, destined 
for a single people and a fixed period of time. 

It must not be concluded from this that it was injurious or 
useless. It was a blessing of God and a prerogative of Israel, 
not only as a revelation, but as an intimation of the divine 
will.® If it had been faithfully observed, it would have been 
a source of merits and a cause of justification.* This is 
indeed what God had in view at first in granting it: it was 
given to lead men to eternal life.” For, if by itself it does 
not confer the privileges of faith and grace, neither does it 
take them away. It was proposed to a people already in 
possession of the promise, from which the help necessary for 
the salutary observation of the Law could be obtained. 

This first aim and end of the Law was, however, frustrated 
by the hard-heartedness of the Jews. The Law indeed opposed 
only a powerless barrier to the invasion of sin and the flood 
of evil.8 Nevertheless, God maintained it for reasons worthy 
of his wisdom. He made of it a watchful guardian to 
preserve the Jews from dangerous contacts and a teacher 
charged with the task of bringing them to Christ. And if 
the pedagogic role of the Law was chiefly negative, it had 
none the less the honour of being the depositary of monothe- 
ism and of revealed truth.° 

But it carried in itself many germs of decay, and when the 


1 Rom. v, 20. 2 Rom. vii, 12 (dysos) ; 14 (mvevparixds) ; 16 (xaAds). 
2 Rom. v, 15-20; Gal. ili, 14. 

Palais 2k 5 Rom. ix, 4 (vopoecia). 

® Rom. il, 13. 7 Rom. vii,10. 8 Rom. viii, 3. 

® Gal. iii, 24 (wadaywyos jpav eis Xprordv) ; ili, 23 (umd vopov edpovpovpeba). 


104 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


human race should reach maturity,! when the moment fixed 
by God for the emancipation of the world should come,? 
when the hour assigned for the fulfilment of the promise 
made to the father of the faithful should strike,? when 
Christ, who is its aim and limit, should appear, and when the 
system of grace, with which it is incompatible, should be 
inaugurated, the régime of the Law had to die a natural 
death. 


4. Thus humanity in its march onward learns and pro- 
gresses like a man who is to live for ever. This collective 
entity, seeking its destiny obscurely and finding it only in 
Christ, is for St Paul the world: the world, which in time past 
sin invaded,* which prides itself in vain upon its wisdom, 
which God labours with that it may become reconciled to 
Christ,® which he compels to declare itself indebted to divine 
justice,” and which he will one day judge in company with 
the elect. The learning which it acquires in the course of 
the centuries and of which it is so proud is, compared to the 
knowledge of Christ, merely a rudimentary education, like 
the alphabet which is taught to little children, and St Paul 
gives to this the significant name of elements of the world. 
Four times, in two distinct texts, the Apostle employs this 
expression which the context illumines. He writes to the 
Galatians : 


So we also, when we were children, were in bondage to the elements 
of the world.... But then indeed, not knowing God, you served 
them who by nature are no gods ; but now, after that you have known 
God, or rather are known by God, -how turn you again to the weak 
and needy elements, which you desire to serve again? You observe 
days and months and times and years.® 


a a ee a 
* Gal. iii, 25 : ubz ventt fides jam non sumus sub paedagogo. 


+. Gali ty. 45.5: * Gal. 111, 22. 
* Rom. vy, 12. ery Corar 206 
ti 2 Cory. 16: ¥/ Rom. 10; $3 Gor-vir ae 


® Gal. iv, 3: Otrws kal pets, Sre Fuev vimiot, bad Th oroixeta TOU Kdopou 
nueba SedovrAwpeévor. . . 

8. “Ada ré7e pev ov« elSdres Bedv eSovrevoare rots poe pt ovat Geois: 
9. viv d€ yodvres Oedv, padov S€ ywwobérres Und Ocod, rads emtoTpedere maAw 
ent Ta Gobeva Kal mrwxd oroxeia, ols adAw dvwbev Sovretoat Oédere ; 

10. juepas maparnpetobe KA. 

A. In verse 3 the first person in the plural (jpets, Fuev, Ayeba) denotes 
the Jews only and not the Jews and Gentiles at the same time. Indeed: 
(a) dre Fyev vijmoz clearly corresponds to 6 vdpos Tratdaywyos pdv yéyovev 
(ili, 24).—(6) Ud ra oTotxeia Too Kéopov Fucba dedovAwpeévor corresponds no 
less clearly to bad vopov éfpovpotueba ovyk evopevot (iii, 23) ;—(c) before the 
fulness of the times the Gentiles were not heirs, even in hope (Eph. ii, 12) ; 
the Jews alone held the promises (Rom. ix, 4).—It results from this text 
that the elements of the world to which the Jews were subjected represent 
the Mosaic institutions. 

B. Verses 8-10 concern Gentile converts, who formerly had served false 
gods (iv, 8). They wish to &9 back (émorpégere) again (ndAw), to serve 


~ 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 105 


The Apostle’s thought is simple: Formerly, not knowing 
God,. you served beings who had nothing divine in them; 
but now, knowing the true God, why do you wish to serve 
such vain thing's as the elements of the world? The contrast 
is between the past ignorance and the present knowledge, 
which renders the judaizing Galatians wholly inexcusable; 
and the emphasis is on the word ‘‘ serve,’’ which designates 
a voluntary subjection. Three details will help us to deter- 
mine the meaning of the ‘‘ elements of the world.’’ Before 
their conversion, the Jews were like young children .( vjv0+), 
which always denotes in St Paul a state of imperfect know- 
ledge ; but now, enlightened by faith, they have ceased to be 
pupils and are no more under a pedagogue. Formerly, they 
were under the yoke and guardianship of the Law; and so 
were subjected to the elements of the world. To be liberated 
from the Mosaic Law and to be delivered from the elements 
of the world is for the Apostle one and the same thing. As to 
the Gentiles, they also were under the domination of the 
elements of the world, and St Paul reproaches them, with a 
persistence not free from pleonasm, with wishing to fall back 
again into that servitude, -because they observe the days, 
months, seasons, and years. The Galatians did not wish to 
return to idolatry, nor to a superstitious worship of angels 
or demons. Nothing in the Epistle suggests this hypothesis; 
it is everywhere only a question of legal observances or of 
prescriptions grafted on to the Law. St Paul must, there- 
fore, include under one general notion the Mosaic ritual and 
the religious customs of the Gentiles, to qualify them all 
together as ‘‘ weak and beggarly rudiments.’’ It is the 
Christian religion which, by comparison, belittles and crushes 
them. 

Those who wish to see in the elements of the world personal 
beings remind us that they are compared to tutors and super- 
intendents, that they are called poor and feeble, and that the 
Galatians serve them as they formerly served idols. But 
these reasons are very weak, and it would be very difficult to 
take them seriously if they were not advanced with such 


once more (mradw) as formerly (dvwhev) the weak and needy elements (iv, 9). 
At first sight, one might be tempted to identify these e/ements with idols; 
but one sees quickly that this identification is absolutely impossible for: 
(a) nothing in the Epistle shows the least propensity on the part of the 
Galatians to fall back into idolatry ;—(é) if it were so, the Apostle would not 
fail to reprove them for it indignantly, as he so severely blames their inclina- 
tion for Jewish practices ;—(c) moreover, he explains to them clearly what 
he means by this return : ‘“‘ You observe the days and months and times and 
ears.” 

f To put themselves voluntarily under the yoke of the Law and its rabbinical 
extension is to fall back into the servitude of former times, although in a 
different way ; it is to return to the elements of the world, to those human and 
ephemeral institutions from which the Gospel has delivered them. 


106 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


assurance. For the Law also is compared to tutors and 
superintendents and even called a pedagogue, and yet is not 
a person; the Epistle to the Hebrews can mention the 
infirmity of the Law without for that reason conferring on it 
personality, and we know that the adjective poor (mTwxds) is 
often applied to things; finally, if the elements of the world 
assume a personal character from the fact that the Galatians 
serve them, what shall we say of the text of St Paul: ‘‘ They 
serve their belly and not Christ?”’ 

The passage in the Epistle to the Colossians says still more 
clearly what the elements of the world are: 


Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit ; 
according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world 
and not according to Christ. ... If then you be dead with Christ 
to the elements of this world, why let laws be imposed on you as though 
living in the world? Touch not [you are told], taste not, handle not: 
which all are unto destruction by the very use, according to the precepts 
and doctrines of men. 


The elements of the world could not be better defined, on 
the one hand, by their real identity with the tradition of men, 
and on the other by their opposition to the true doctrine of 
Christ. The synonymy between elements of the world and 
the tradition of men is all the clearer, because for St Paul the 
world means humanity left to itself or withdrawn from the 
life-giving influence of Christ, and because the whole context 
converges towards the idea of a philosophical, traditional, 
and elementary doctrine, to be corrected by the teaching of 
the Gospel. Let it not be urged that the Law of Moses, 


* Col. ii, 8: Baérere pi ris Eorar 5 ovdaywydy Sa ris pirocopias Kai 
KEvijs amdrns, Kata THY napddoow r&v dvOpdinwy, Kata TO aro.yeia Tod 
kKd¢0U Kal ov Kata Xptorov. 

20. Et amebdvere adv XpiorG dnd rdv orotyelwy roo Kdcpov, Ti ws 
lavres ev xdopw Soyparileate ; 

21. Mn din, und yevon, unde Olyns: & €or mdvra eis POdpav TH aroypycet, 
xara Ta evrdAuara Kal diSacKkadias trav dvOpamwv. 

In the first part of this text the Apostle affirms the identity of the elements 
of the world with human traditions and their opposition to Christian teaching ; 
in the second part he reminds us that the Christian is dead to the elementary 
institutions of the world, in whatever manner they are expressed, whether as 
Judaizing practices (verse 9: feasts, celebrations of the new moon, sabbath 
days, distinction between pure and impure foods), or as observances inspired 
by dualistic doctrines (verse 21 : touch not, taste not, handle not). 

All the words of verse 20 should be carefull weighed :—(a) Death with 
Christ is, without any doubt, the mystical death of baptism, which puts an 
end to all our past servitudes, especially to dependence on the Mosaic Law. 
Cf. Rom. vi, 4; vii, 4-6; Gal. ii, 19, 20.—(6) The world must have the same 
meaning in both cases, in order that the reasoning may not be defective. 
It cannot be the physical world, for it is not the business of the Colossians to 
die to the world thus understood ; hence it is the mora/ world, humanity 
without Christ, subjected to influences other than those of Christ.—(c) The 
word Soyparileobe can only signify “to submit to laws” (in the passive), 
or better, “to allow laws to be imposed upon you” (in the middle voice, 
reflexive). 


THE INITIATIVE OF THE FATHER 107 


being a divine institution, could not be represented as a 
human tradition; for, in fact, the false teachers of Colosse 
mingled with the Mosaic observances practices of an extreme 
asceticism; and, moreover, the Mosaic prescriptions have 
now only the value of purely human traditions, since the 
dying Christ has nailed them to his cross. It is an imperfect 
Law which the Gospel abrogates, a shadow which disappears 
before the new light; the ancient legislation has had its day. 

Even though the Mosaic Law should retain a certain value 
for others, it would have no value for the Christian who is 
dead in Christ to all past servitudes. For ‘‘ by the Law the 
Christian is dead to the Law,’’ he lives no longer ‘‘ in the 
world,’’! which is foreign to the influences of Christ and still 
subject to the rudimentary institutions of former times. 
Henceforth these outworn restrictions have lost for him their 
imperative force. They are nothing but ‘‘ human teachings 
which are able to have an [unjustified] renown for wisdom, 
spontaneous piety, humility, and austerity, but which, in 
reality, even while mortifying the body, only feed the flesh,?”’ 
the principle opposed to the action of the Holy Spirit upon us. 

Mosaic prescriptions, traditions superimposed by the 
Rabbis on the code of Sinai, practices suggested by religious 
sentiment whether normal or misleading, these are what St 
Paul always designates as the elements of the world, and 
these are what the coming of Christ, in whom are centred all 
the treasures of knowledge and wisdom, dispels like a shadow. 


5. This sudden reversal, this startling transformation, is 
brought about in the fulness of the times or in the fulness of 
time.* The two expressions are not perfectly synonymous ; 
the latter denotes the moment when humanity, having 
emerged from. childhood, and thenceforth fit for stronger and 


» Gal. ii, 19; vi, 14; Col. ii, 20 (ri ws Cavres év ndopw Soyparllecde). 

* Col. ii, 22, 23. For the meaning see Vol. I, p.’284, note. 

3 Eph. i, 10: els oixovoulay rot mAnpwparos taév Kaipa@v. Gal. iv, 4: 
cre Sé FAGev 7d TANpwWya Tod xpdvov. The expression zAnpotv xpdvov or 
xaipév signified, even among the classics (Plato, Leg., ix, 866A), “to complete 
a definite period of time,’’ the measure of time being considered as a kind of 
receiver, which is continually filled by the addition of successive moments.— 
The meanings of the words ypovos and xatpés are not identical: ypdvos 
refers only to duration, while xatpos means properly “the season, the 
occasion ”’; ypdvos is uniform duration, xaipés is duration distinguished by 
variations, such as the seasons of the year, the revolutions of the stars, the 
periods of history or of human life. St Paul says (Gal. iv, 4): dre HAdev 70 
mAnpwua Tod xpovov, because he is alluding to the decree of the Father (iv, 2: 
dpxt ris mpobecpias tod watpds), fixing a certain period of delay for the 
sending of his Son, during which time (iv, 1: €¢’ daov xpovov) the human race 
is regarded as young, like a child under age. He says, on the contrary, 
(Eph. i, 10): ets ofxovouiay rod mAnpwpatos tay Kaipdv, because this long 
duration is divided into periods, in which the providential action of God is 
exercised in different ways. These xatpoi have some correspondence with the 
aidves, Eph. iii, 11 ; 1 Cor. x, 11; 1 Tim. i, 17; Heb. 1, 2. 


108 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


more virile institutions, enters into possession of its rights, 
its privileges, and its heritage; the former, implies a series of 
historical periods succeeding one another according to a plan 
determined in advance, just as the regular cycle of the seasons 
brings in turn the buds, the flowers, and the fruits. The 
fulness of time is the date freely appointed by divine wisdom; 
the fulness of the times is the coronation of the preparations 
made by Providence. 


BOOK III 
THE PERSON OF THE REDEEMER 


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CHAPTER I 
THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 


I—CHRIST BEFORE THE AGES 
1. Paul and Christ. 2. Eternal Pre-existence of Christ. 


I. ODERN historians of dogma are sometimes 
surprised, ‘‘ after the simpler Christology of 
the first apostles, to hear St Paul attribute to 
the Saviour a celestial pre-existence before his 
terrestrial birth and even a participation in the 

creation of the world.’’ Their astonishment may be due to 

an imperfect knowledge or to an inaccurate appreciation of 
the theology of the first apostles, but the fact remains none 
the less disconcerting for one who wishes to reduce the 
grandeur of Christ to human dimensions. And it its still 
more so if we take account of the two following facts: that 
St Paul was the first to state the Christian belief positively 
in writing ; and, secondly, that his Christology was never the 
subject of controversy. For this fact is undeniable, and is 
recognized in good faith by the critics who are least inclined 
to defend the traditional positions. This is what gives so 
much interest to St Paul’s teaching about the person of 

Christ. 

The way in which the converted Pharisee speaks of the 
lately crucified religious reformer Jesus of Nazareth, whose 
work and name he but yesterday thought it a glory and a 
duty to annihilate and abolish, is a strange phenomenon 
which seems to contradict all the laws of psychology and all 
the analogies of history. Paul, that proud genius, so 
conscious of his dignity, so disdainful of the idols of flesh 
and blood, is in ecstasy and adoration before his Master. 
He wishes to be his liege-man, his slave; and also the slave 
of his brethren for love of him.+ He allows no one to put 
him on a level with any created thing. Higher than the 
heavens, vaster than the universe, more powerful than death, 
sole victor over sin, the only mediator of grace and the one 
redeemer of the human race, Christ effaces all else by his 
splendour, fills everything with his plenitude, and is 


1 Rom. i, 1; Gal. i, 10; Phil. i, 1 (SodAos *I. X.) ; 2 Cor. iv, 5 (mos servos 
vestros per Jesum—i.e., propter Jesum, 5a ’Inoobv).—The title of servant of 
Christ which applies to all Christians (Eph. vi, 6 ; Col. iv, 12 ; 2 Tim. ii, 24), 
should be compared with the injunction : Pretzo empti estzs, nolite fiert servt 
hominum (1 Cor. vii, 23). 

III 


112 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


antecedent to the ages.! Therefore every knee is to bend 
before him, in heaven, on earth, and in hell, for the most 
perfect of the celestial spirits recognize in him their Chief, 
their Creator, and their God.* Such is the picture of Jesus 
which the Apostle, soon after the passion, sets before the 
witnesses of his life and death and even before his persecutors 
and executioners. 

What colossal proportions the image of the Crucified 
suddenly assumes in the mind of Saul? The transcendent 
character of this image is such that it can grow no more; 
to the infinite nothing can be added. All our efforts to trace 
its gradual development remain fruitless. From the first 
moment of his conversion, Christ is for him the incom- 
parable, the unique; nothing stands above him or beside 
him. And this is not at the expense of his human nature. 
Jesus Christ is not a creation of the fancy. He is a very real 
being, still living in the memory of his disciples, who repeat 
his words and model their conduct on his own. When Saul 
became a Christian, at most only six or seven years had 
elapsed since the passion; when he began his public preach- 
ing, he was separated from it by scarcely ten years, and he 
wrote his first Epistles only twenty-two years subsequent to 
that memorable event, Jesus Christ, only a few years older 
than himself, was for him, in all the force of the term, a con- 
temporary, whom he might easily have passed in the streets 
of Jerusalem or under the porticoes of the Temple; he was 
also a compatriot, if it be true, as St Jerome believes, that 
Saul’s family was of Galilean origin. How is it that he has 
become his God? Neither the time which had elapsed, nor 
his Palestinian associates, nor the circumstances of the death 
of Jesus were favourable to an apotheosis; and the serious- 
ness of Jewish monotheism did not lend itself to the ridiculous 
deifications which placed a Claudius or a Tiberius in the ranks 
of the immortals, assigning to them temples, priests, and 
sacrifices, and making them the peers of the gods of 
Olympus, who were indeed neither better nor worse. 

When the flattery of the degenerate Romans, rivalling 
oriental adulation, decreed divine honours to the emperors, 
who accepted them with a certain reserve at first, but later 
quite shamelessly, the Jews were inflexibly opposed to this 
impious worship. The adoration of a man, were he king or 
emperor, was for them the abomination of desolation. It 
was actually necessary for Rome to yield to their invincible 
repulsion and to dispense them officially from an act more 
horrible in their eyes than death. The Christians also showed 
no less obstinacy in this respect, and often sealed with their 


? Col. i, 18-20 ; Eph. i, 21-23 ; Rom. iii, 23-25 ; 1 Tim. ii, 5. 
* Phil. ii, 9-11 ; Col. i, 16, 17; Rom, ix, 5; Tit. ii, 5. The Epistle to the 
Hebrews and St John have nothing stronger. 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 113 


blood their refusal to concede to a man the titles and honours 
reserved for God. In vain did the pagans refuse any com- 
prehension of their scruples, they could never triumph over 
them. For the Christians, still more than for the Jews, the 
cult of Czsar was always the adoration of the Beast; and 
the temple of the Augusti was the throne of Satan. When 
St Paul protests that there is for us ‘‘ only one- God, the 
Father; and only one Lord, Jesus Christ,’’ his profession of 
faith sounds like the indignant cry of the Christian conscience 
against the supreme aberration of expiring polytheism. Since 
that time, all the divine titles, ‘‘ God, Son of God, God of 
God, Lord, or Lord God, Saviour, or God the Saviour,’’ had 
been profaned by the adulation of the people and by the 
apathy of paganism; but Paul, by applying these terms to 
the pre-existent Christ, gives them the Jehovistic sense which 
they have in the Bible. 


2. The pre-existence of the Son of God is clearly shown by 
what we shall have to say concerning his divine nature, his 
eternal relations to the heart of God, and his active part in 
the creation of the world; but it is also proved directly by 
three series of testimonies. 

At a certain moment of time Christ ‘‘came into the 
world,? he appeared in the flesh;? being rich, he became 
poor, that through his poverty we might be rich.’’* Now it 
is clear that the exchange of the riches of heaven for the 
poverty of earth necessarily presupposes a mode of existence 
previous to the incarnation. Texts like the following : ‘‘ God, 
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for 
sin, condemned sin in the flesh,’’* or ‘‘ God sent his Son, 
born of a woman, made under the Law... that we might 
receive the adoption of sons,’’> have nothing in common with 
the biblical phrase: ‘‘ God sent them a judge or a saviour’’ ; 
for, if the mission of the Son coincides with his earthly 
origin, his existence of necessity precedes it, since it is the 
likeness of sinful flesh,-in other words, human nature, which 
is the goal of the mission. 

Christ is the ‘‘firstborn of every creature.’’® It is 
absolutely impossible that this expression means the “‘ first- 
born among creatures’’; it signifies, therefore, ‘‘ born 
before every creature’’; which implies first that Christ is 
not to be ranked in the category of created beings; and, 
secondly, that he possesses a mode of existence superior to 
and antecedent to every created being. In order that there 


1 1 Tim. i, 15: X. I. #Adev els tov Kdcpov auaptwAods adoa. Not only 
does he come, but he comes with a purpose, which does not allow us to compare 
his coming with ‘“‘ every man coming into the world.” 

2 1 Tim. iii, 16. $22-Cor vill00, “ Rom. viii, 3. 

® Gal. iv, 4. ® Col. i, 15. See Vol. I, pp. 288-9. 

II. 


114 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


may be no misunderstanding about this, Paul himself com- 
ments on it by saying that Christ ‘‘is before all things ”’ ; 
and he gives as a reason for this that ‘‘ All things were 
created by him and for him.’’! As it is necessary to exist 
before creating, the consequence is clear. 

Not only did Christ exist, but he ‘‘ subsisted in the form of 
God.’’2 The form of God cannot be acquired any more 
than it can be lost; it could not be supplanted by the form 
of a slave added thereto in time: where it is, it is from all 
eternity. Therefore, ‘‘ Jesus Christ was yesterday, is to- 
day, and will be for ever.’’ Like the author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, St Paul is accustomed to distinguish in the 
life of Christ three states or phases: the eternal pre-existence 
of the Son with the Father, and what might be called his pre- 
history ; his historical appearance on earth in the fulness of 
time; and the glorious exaltation of the risen Christ. And 
it is evident that these three states, succeeding one another 
with no change of the subject, belong to the same person. 

The recent hypothesis which attributes pre-existence to the 
soul of Christ needs no refutation: the pre-existence of souls 
was always antipathetic to Jewish thought, and not the 
slightest trace of it is found in the New Testament; more- 
over, why should St Paul honour Christ, in contradistinction 
to all the others, with a pre-existence which, according to 
this hypothesis, would be common to him and all men? 

Some contend that the Apostle was inspired by Philo, and that 
his Christ is, after all, only the typical man of the Alexandrian 
philosopher ;* but as Paul is ignorant of the Hellenist Plato, 
or in any case borrows nothing from him, and as his realistic 


1 Col. i, 16: ra wavra 8’ adbrod Kal els adrov Extiorat. 

se hiltgiaG, * Heb. xiii, 8. 

‘ A. Hilgenfeld (Bemerkungen tiber din paulinischen Christus, in Zett- 
schrift fiir wiss. Theol., xiv, 1871, pp. 188-192) refers at the same time to the 
ideal man of Philo and to Plato’s theory of pre-existent souls; but it 
is necessary to choose between these two dissimilar conceptions. If the 
pre-existent Christ is only the pre-existent soul of Christ, according to the 
heresy of Apollinarius, he is no longer the ideal man of Philo. We know 
that, according to Philo, the creation of the typal man is indicated in.Gen. i, 27 
(€roinoev 6 Qeds tov advOpwrov Kar’ elxdva @eot), and the formation of the 
real man in Gen. ii, 7 (€rAacev 6 Beds tov avOpwrov yotv amd Tis ys). 
This ideal man is not the Logos, the idea of ideas and the archetype of reason, 
he is the zdea of man (cf. J. Drummond, P&z/lo J/udaeus, London, 1888, vol. ii, 
p. 275), and therefore he has no connection with the really pre-existent Christ . 
of St Paul. Philo is very explicit: the celestial man (6 odpavios dvOpwzos) 
is tncorporeal, the terrestrial man (yjivos) has a body (Leg. allegor., i, 12; 
Mangey, vol. i, p. 49) ; the latter is composed of a soul and a body ; he is man 
or woman, and mortal; the former is an idea or seal (z.e., the intellectual 
exemplar, which the artist stamps upon matter), intelligible, incorporeal, 
neither man nor woman, and immortal by nature (6 8€ xara tH eixdva id€a 
ris % odppayis, vontdés, dowparos, ovr’ appnv ovre OAus, adlapros duce, 
De mundi optf., 46; Mangey, vol. i, p. 32). Between this Platonic idea and 
the pre-existent Christ of St Paul there is nothing in common. Philo’s 
typal man is not the second Adam, but the frst. 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 115 


theology stands at the antipodes of the theosophic idealism 
of Philo, this new opinion completely lacks foundation and 
does not bear examination. 

Other critics concede to us the fact that St Paul actually 
taught the real pre-existence of Christ, and that it is im- 
possible to deny it without prejudice and dogmatic bias; but 
of his pre-existent Christ they entertain the strangest idea. 
According to them, Christ pre-existed, not as God, but as 
man: a real man, possessing already a luminous, ethereal, 
immaterial body; a human prototype, a divine image, a 
divine exemplar, on the model of which all other men will 
be formed; a celestial man, descended from heaven and 
destined to return thither after a period of earthly existence ; 
a spiritual man, who is animated by the spirit of God and is 
himself spirit.1 We are also told that Paul borrowed his 
theory of: the pre-existent Christ from the idle fancies of 
Palestinian Judaism concerning the existence of the Messiah ; 
but this rabbinical conception is a very late one, and, more- 
over, is understood only as referring to an ideal pre- 
existence.2_ Now the principal supporters of the theory which 
we thus set forth are obliged to recognize that the pre-existent 
Christ of St Paul is a reality. How could he be anything else 
than a real being, who creates and preserves the world, who is 
sent hither by God and exchanges the splendours of heaven 
for the humiliations of earth? But if Jesus Christ was a man 
before being born, he must, of course, be relegated to the 


1 Holtzmann, Weutest. Theol., vol. ii, p. 82: Im Geist des Paulus kommt 
die Vorstellung nur tn der Form einer realen Praexistenz vor —Holtzmann 
builds up his strange theory of the Urmensch on the fact that Christ—whether 
pre-existent, historical or glorified—remains identical with himself; but he 
was man while on the earth, therefore he was man previously. But the mere 
presentation of this sophism reveals its error. The argument proves only 
that Christ is one and the same person, under his three phases of existence, 
but not that he has always been united to one body ; for texts like Rom. viii, 3 ; 
Gal. iv, 5 ; Phil. ii, 7; 1 Tim. iii, 16, show most clearly that he assumed a body 
in time. One cannot without extreme difficulty succeed—if indeed one can 
do so at all—in forming any idea of the pre-existent Christ of Holtzmann, 
which is a fleeting image, floating between reality and fancy, and which can 
be for us, he assures us, only an idea, but which for St Paul is a person.— 
This hypothesis is excellently stated and refuted by Father Lagrange (Revue 
b26]., vol. vi, 1897, pp. 468-474): in so far as ‘the lack of precision in its 
pretended depth”? lends itself to a precise refutation.—Weizsacker, Das 
apost. Zettalter®, p. 121, expresses ideas analogous to those of Holtzmann. 

2 The rabbis admitted indeed that the Messiah existed in the mind of God 
before the creation of the world, but this was by virtue of an ¢dea/ pre 
existence in the divine decree of predestination (cf. Weber, /uidische Theologte® 
pp. 198, 348, 354). Wholly different is the later conception of the rabbis 
who, in order to explain the delay in the appearance of the Messiah, said that 
he existed already somewhere, but that God for various reasons kept him in 
reserve. It is no longer a question here of pre-existence, but of an actual 
existence in an unknown place (cf. Weber, of. c#t., p. 355). As to the vision 

of the Son of Man by Daniei (vii, 13), itis prophetic, and moreover implies 
no eternal pre-existence. 


116 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


rank of creatures, since God alone is uncreated ; and how, 
then, can St Paul affirrh that every created being without 
exception in heaven and on earth has been created by him 
and for him? If Jesus Christ was man before being born, 
how can we explain the fact that he becomes man at his 
birth? And if Jesus, in rising from the dead, returns to his 
original state, which he had before his incarnation, what 
significance has the resurrection? That is what the authors 
of this curious invention have never tried to tell us, and this 
stamps their whole hypothesis, in whatever obscurity they 
envelop it, as absurd. 


II—Jesus Curist Lorp 


1. Our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. The Lord, God’s Proper Name. 3. Prayers 
and Doxologies in Honour of the Lord Jesus. 


1. The most concise résumé of Christology is contained in 
the formula: ‘‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.’” 
Although all the elements of it are anterior to him and go 
back to the apostolic preaching, it is stereotyped only in St 
Paul, who gives it an import and fulness of meaning which 
are of the utmost imterest to the student of the history of 
theology. 

In the synoptists the question is to know whether Jesus is 
or is not the Christ—that is to say, the Messiah, the 
descendant and antitype of David, the expectation and the 
hope of Israel. Herod ascertains the place where he is to be 
born, John the Baptist points him out, the demoniacs proclaim 
him, Peter confesses him, Jesus himself openly claims this 
title which epitomizes his mission, and the zealots of the 
Jews bestow it on him ironically.?_ But while the synoptists 
make us eyewitnesses, so to speak, of this work of gradual 
recognition, and while they always maintain a very clear 
notion of the bond which unites the character of the Messiah 


2 The entire formula is found in 1 Cor.i, 9: Itords 6 @eds bv od ExAHOnre 
els Kowwvlay Tod viod abrod ’Inood Xpicrob Tob Kupiov judy, and in Rom. i, 4, 
where viod @cod is in apposition with "Incod Xproroé rob Kupiov nudv.—The 
usual formula of St Paul is 6 xvpios audv "Incots Xpiords (forty-four 
times as against eleven times in the Catholic Epistles, once in the Acts 
and one doubtful case, Acts xx, 21), less often 6 xupuos "I. X. (eighteen times 
as against once in the Epistle of James, twice in the Acts and a doubtful 
case, Acts iv, 33), or simply 6 «vptos *Incots, with or without jyav after xpos 
(twenty-four times and two doubtful cases [1 Cor. v, 43 2 Cor. iv, 14] as 
against ten times in the Acts, twice in Hebrews, twice in 2 Peter, once in 
Apoc., and finally Mark xvi, 19). We see that, apart from the end of Mark, 
these formulas do not appear in the Gospels. The expression ‘‘ Son of Ged”’ 
is, on the contrary, frequent in all the books of the New Testament. 

2 Matt. ii, 4 (Herod), Luke iii, 15, 16; John i, 20-27 (John the Baptist), 
Luke iv, 41 (demoniacs), Matt. xvi, 16; Mark viii, 29 ; Luke ix, 20 (Peter), 
Matt. xxvi, 68 (executioners), Matt. xxvi, 63, 64 (Jesus).—In all these 
examples and in general in the Gospels 6 Xptords can be translated by the 
‘* Messiah.” 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 117 


with the fulfilment of the promises, for St Paul the identifica- 
tion of Jesus with the Christ is a definite and undisputed fact. 
The Christ has visibly broken all the Jewish ties, and the 
memory of them is almost effaced. Christ becomes the 
proper name of the Saviour, and as such can do without 
the article.’ Christ dies to make us triumph over death, 
rises from the dead to incorporate us with his life, reigns 
glorious to associate us in his glory. His work is super- 
mundane, and the place where it is consummated is super- 
terrestrial. From the union of Christians with Christ there 
results a new being, the mystical Christ, in whom there is 
no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile, Greek 
and barbarian, slave and free man, because all are ‘‘ one in 
Christ Jesus.’’? When we consider that Paul certainly 
reflects the Christian thought of his time and that his 
Epistles preceded the compilation of the Gospels, we can 
but admire the effort at historical reconstruction which the 
evanpelists must have made, in order not to project into the 
life and words of Jesus the ideas and sentiments of their own 
surroundings. 


2. It is well known that the word ‘‘ Lord’’ is, in the 
Septuagint, the usual translation of the ineffable name, the 
sacred tetragram. It could be given to the Messiah either 
as a theocratic king, the representative of Jehovah, or as 
designated by the Psalmist’s prophecy : ‘‘ The Lord said unto 
my Lord.’’? Yet the evangelists apply it to Jesus only rarely. 
In St Mark and St Matthew the ‘‘ Lord’’ is usually God him- 
self, as in the Old Testament, and the appellation ‘‘ Lord’”’ 
is most frequently merely a polite form, like ‘‘ Master ’’ or 
‘* Rabbi.’’ As the Passion approaches, they depart a little 
from their reserve.* St Luke, and especially St John, begin 


’ 1 The word Xptordés is employed without the article, as a proper name and 
without allusion to the etymological meaning of Messiah, about ninety-four 
times, not including the expressions é€v Xpior@, ov X.,’Incots Xpiorés, and X. "I. 
In the Gospels, on the contrary—except the expression ’Inoots Xptorés, which 
is very rare (title of Matt. and of Mark; Johni, 17 ; xvil, 3 and two doubtful 
cases, Matt, i, 18; xvi, 21)—the word Xpuorés is regularly accompanied by the 
article. When the article is wanting, the omission is required by the grammar, 
Xp.tords being in the vocative (Matt. xxvi, 68) or in apposition with an accusa- 
tive (Luke xxiii, 2; John ix, 22; moreover, Mark i, 34 if Xpuorov elvar is 
authentic), or finally employed simply to explain the meaning of the word 
“Messiah ”: rov Meacoiav 6 éort peleppnvevdpevov Xproros (John i, 42), 
Meccias épyerat 6 Aeydpevos Xptoros (John iv, 25). The only exception is 
Mark ix, 41: ort Xptoroo €ore. 

2 Gal. iii, 28. AVP SCik, is 

« Mark xi, 3 ; Matt. xxi, 3 ; Luke xix, 31 (the Master [6 xvptos] has need 
of him).—Mark xili, 35 ; Matt. xxiv, 42 (the Lord will come).—Mark xii, 36, 
37; Matt. xxii, 43-45 ; Luke xx, 42-44 (Jesus claims the title of “ Lord,” 
which belongs to him according to the prophecy of David).—Add the end of 
Mark (xvi, 19, 20, and perhaps also xiii, 20). Before Passion-week the first two 
evangelists never call the Saviour thus, for “the Son of Man, master («vpvos) 
of the Sabbath ” (Mark ii, 28; Matt. xii, 8; Luke vi, 5), has another meaning. 


118 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


to do this sooner ;! nevertheless, both are far behind St Paul, 
and this slowness, in our opinion, can only be explained by 
a scruple about historic truth. St Paul, apart from quotations 
from the Old Testament, regularly calls Jesus Christ ‘‘ the 
Lord.’’ Probably the language of the Apostle does not afford 
a single exception.” In every case ‘‘ Lord’’ has become the 
proper name of Christ, and can, as such, dispense with the 
article. Furthermore, in taking the name of Jehovah, 
the Christ receives also all his attributes; Paul calls himself 
a servant of Christ, as the prophets liked to call themselves 
servants of Jehovah; in phrases expressing divine actipns, 
such as creation, the dispensation of grace, sanctification, 
judgement, and final retrrbution, the names of God and of 
Lord are exchanged, as synonyms are interchanged accord- 
ing to the flow of utterance; finally, whatever Scripture 
relates of Jehovah, Paul understands unhesitatingly as apply- 
ing to his Master.‘ 

Jehovah was the ‘‘ Rock of Israel’’ or simply ‘‘ the 
Rock ’’; such was the familiar Old Testament usage. Paul 
knows that better than anyone, yet it does not prevent him 
from affirming that the ‘‘ Rock was Christ’’ pre-existent— 
Petra autem erat Christus.> And he adds a little later: ‘‘ Let 
us not tempt (the Lord, or) Christ, as some of them tempted 
(him) and perished by the serpents.’’® One may read: ‘‘ the 
Lord ’’ or ‘‘ Christ,’’ the variation of the reading has little im- 
portance, because for St Paul the two terms are synonymous. 
Joel said, speaking of Jehovah: ‘‘ Everyone that shall call 
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’’’ But the Lord is 
Christ, and the Apostle is able to comment on this text as 
follows: ‘‘ There is no difference between the Jew and the 
Greek, since they all have the same Lord, merciful towards 
all those who call upon him, for [it is written]: Everyone 
that shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’’® 
Salvation, formerly connected with the invocation of Jehovah, 


1 John iv, 1 ;:vi;'23 xi, 2: ;.Luke vil, 13;19 ; x; 1, 39, 41 ; xi, 30 -x11)37 0420 
Xlli, 15 ; xvil, 5, 6; xviii, 6; xix, 8.—In the Acts, St Luke applies to Jesus 
Christ the title of ‘‘ Lord’”’ (6 xv¥pios, always with the article) still more 
freely. When he makes St Paul speak, he usually simply says 6 xupuos 
(however, in xxi, 23: tod xupiov "Inood) ; when he speaks in his own name, 
he prefers to say 6 xuptos *Inoots (except xviii, 8, 9, and in the expression 
% 000s Tob Kuptov). 

2 Cremer, Worterbuch der neutest. Grdcitat®, p. 619, says that excepting in 
quotations from the Old Testament St Paul employs xvpios in the sense of 
“God ”’ at least in 1 Cor. x, 25 (rod Kupiov yap 4% yh Kal ro mAjpwpa atrijs). 
How is it that this scholar has not remarked that there is here a textual 
quotation from Ps. xxiii, 1 ?—In reality not one plausible exception to the 
rule which we give has been pointed out. ‘There is no reason for admitting 
one in xvi, 7 : “ I hope to remain with you if the Lord permits.” 

*? Rom. xiv, 6; 1 Cor. vii, 22 ; Eph. vi, 8; Phil. ii, 11, etc. 

« Am. ili, 7; Jer: vil, 35 ; Dan. ix, 6, etc. 

Sey; COMME PAL * 1 Cor. x, 9. Alhusion to Num. xxi, 5, 6. 

7 Joel iii, 5 (ii, 32) * Rom. x, 13. 





| 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 119g 


is now connected with the invocation of Christ, and, to prove 
it, Paul quotes the word of the prophet. It follows logically 
that in his eyes Christ is one with Jehovah. How could we 
otherwise explain his discourse to the Elders at Ephesus: 
““Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein 
the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops to rule the Church of 
God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.’’! This 
phrase early scandalized some timorous theologians, who 
caused it to undergo various corrections, one of which, con- 
sisting in the substitution of the name ‘‘ Lord’’ for the name 
‘* God,’’ ended by invading most of the Greek manuscripts. 
Modern critics, however, have had recourse to the most 
extravagant hypotheses in order to explain away Paul’s saying 
that ‘‘ God has purchased the Church by his own blood.” 
But the Apostle has no need of their assistance. His 
language in this passage is no more extraordinary than in 
many another. He limits himself, as is his custom, to 
identifying Jesus Christ with God, and applies to him an 
attribute which suits him only in his human nature. But the 
communication of idioms, of which he avails himself very 
extensively, authorizes his doing so. - 

Must we, then, still be astonished at the value which St 
Paul attaches to the text ‘‘ Christ is Lord’’? He makes of 
it the pivot of orthodoxy and the criterion of the charismata: 


““No man, speaking by the Spirit of God, saith anathema 


to Jesus. And no man can say Jesus [is] Lord, but by 
the Holy Ghost.’’? He regards it as the most concise 
epitome of his Gospel: ‘* We preach not ourselves, but Jesus 
Christ as Lord.’’? Much more; he presents it as a profession 
of Christian faith, containing, in substance, the conditions of 
salvation: ‘‘If thou confess with thy mouth that Jesus is 
Lord and believe in thy heart that God that raised him up 
from the dead, thou shalt be saved; for the Scripture saith: 
Whosoever believeth* in him shall not be confounded.’’4 
Isaias had indeed said that of God and not of Christ; 
but for Paul it is the same thing, and we must not be weary 
of repeating it, since his Christ is Lord and God. 


3. If this be so, we should expect to see the Apostle place 
Christ above all that is not God, in a sphere inaccessible to 
created beings, to address hymns and prayers to him as to 
God himself, and to apply to him the doxologies which Scrip- 
ture reserves for God. Nor are our expectations disappointed. 

The Epistle to the Galatians opens with the words: ‘‘ Paul, 
an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ 


1 Acts xx, 28. See pp. 427-9. 
¥, Cor. xii,°3; 


2Cor, iv, 5: ; 
Rom. x, 9. Cf. Isa. xxviii, 16, whence the quotation is drawn. 


om @ ww 


120 THE THEOLOGY OF SE PAUL 


and God the Father.’’! Paul denies absolutely to men any 
causality, remote (dé) or immediate (6:4), as to his apostolate ; 
he is neither the delegate nor the mandatory of men. When, 
therefore, he calls himself an apostle by the exclusive act of 
Jesus Christ and God the Father, he clearly considers Christ 
as a being superior to man, or, rather, as a person who is 
more than a man. Doubtless there are between God and 
man an infinitude of degrees; but if we reflect that Paul 
certainly would not claim that grace—and especially a grace 
like that of the apostolate—could come from a being inferior 
to God, and that he includes Jesus Christ and God under one 
and the same causative particle (6:4), thus leaving to no one 
the possibility of alleging that he establishes between the two 
a subordination of authority or rank, since Jesus Christ is 
here named even first, there can be no reasonable objection 
offered to interpreters who see in these words a proof of the 
divinity of the Son. In order to defeat their reasoning, it 
would be necessary to be sure beforehand that Jesus Christ 
is not God, and that Paul did not believe him to be God; but 
such a prejudiced position renders all sound exegesis im- 
possible. 

Christians do not consciously separate Christ from God. 
From the first they prayed to him, invoked him, sang to him, 
and glorified him as God. St Stephen, dying, exclaimed: 
‘“ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. . . Lord, lay not this sin 
to their charge.’’* The ardent supplication which Jesus on 
the cross addressed to his Father, the first martyrs address 
to Jesus himself. henceforth ‘‘ whosoever shall call upon 
the name of the Lord shall be saved,’’? and the Lord is none 
other than Christ. The faithful are ‘‘ those who call upon 
the name of the Lord’’; such is their. distinctive and 
characteristic title. Paul writes ‘‘to the Church which is 
at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called 
to be saints, with all that invoke the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, in every place.’’* Practice follows theory. The 


1 Gal. i, 1: [TabAos admdarodos, ox an’ avOpdawyv ovde 8.’ avOpdmov, aAAad 
dia "Inoob Xprorob Kat Qeod rartpéds. 

The preposition avd designates the source, the preposition 8d indicates 
the channel of the call to the apostolate. Paul has received the apostolate 
from God in opposition to the false apostles ; and he has received it directly 
from him, equally with the Twelve. In the second part of the phrase, the 
particle 6d is used alone, in order to show that here the source end the channel 
are identical—The proof of the divinity of Christ, based upon this passage, 
was developed by Origen at considerable length in his commentary (cf. 
St Pamphilus, Apologia pro Origene, XIV, 1297-8). It is repeated in sub- 
stance by the Latin (Victorinus, Ambrosiaster, St Jerome, etc.) and by the 
Greek commentators (St Chrysostom, Theodoret, etc.). 

* Acts vii, 59 : Kupte “Inaod, d€£ar +6 mveiud pov. vii, 60: Kupre, pa orhons 
avrois tavrnv THv duapriay. In the acts of the martyrs many similar prayers 
are to be found. 


* Romax.3 3 Sol GCorsly 3: 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 121 


Apostle, feeling ‘‘a sting in his flesh, an angel of Satan,”’’ 
which buffets him and seems about to paralyze his ministry, 
prays to the Lord three times to be free from it; and the 
Lord says to him: ‘‘ My grace is sufficient for thee.’’! He 
prays not to God the Father but to the Lord, because he 
knows very well that to pray to the Lord is to pray to God 
himself; and the Lord, the Author and Dispenser of grace, 
promises him his all-powerful aid. 

In the year 112 A.D. some who had formerly been Christians 
told Pliny that before their apostasy they had been accustomed 
to assemble to sing hymns to Christ as God: Christo quasi 
Deo.” This was not a novelty. Evidence is given by 
Eusebius to prove that the custom of composing psalms and 
odes, in which the Word was celebrated as God, goes back 
to the very beginning.* This assertion can be verified by the 
express testimony of St Paul: ‘‘ Speaking to yourselves in 
psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and 
making melody in your hearts to the Lord.’’* In the parallel 
passage “‘ the Lord”’ is replaced by ‘‘ God,’’> which proves 
that the faithful addressed the same praises to God and to 
Christ. Short fragments of these primitive compositions, 
more remarkable for their religious tone than for their poetic 
inspiration, have very probably come down to us; such as the 
following rythmical description of the ‘‘ mystery of piety ”’ : 


He manifested himself in the flesh, 
He was justified in the spirit, 

He appeared to the angels ; 

He was preached among the nations, 
He was believed in the world, 

He was taken up into glory.® 


The doxology is a sort of abbreviated hymn. The Hebrews 
connected it only with the name of God, and this is what the 
Apostle himself generally does: ‘‘ To God alone be honour 
and glory for ever and ever. Amen.’’’ But already St Paul, 


22, Or, Xi, 6, 0. * Epist. ad Trajan., 96. 

* Hist. Eccl., V, xxviii, 5: ... Parpol 8€ dao nal Gai adeAdav an’ 
apyis urd motdv ypageitoa tov Adyov rob @eot tov Xpiorov vyvotcw 
Beodoyotvres ; 

« Eph. v, :9: gdovres Kal padrovres tH Kapdig dudv 7H Kupiw. 

5 Col. iii, 16: qdovres & rats xapdlas tudv TH Ged. 

® y Tim. iii, 16. Another probable fragment is Eph. v, 14, and perhaps .. 
1 Cor. ii, 9; but in the latter text there is no question of Christ. 

7 There are two kinds of doxology : one consists of a formula of benediction, 
beginning in Hebrew with 9173, in Greek with evAoynrds (benedictus) ; the 
other takes the form indicated in the text, or a more complicated form. 
The first, very frequent in the Old Testament and connected also with the 
name of God in the New Testament (Luke i, 68; Rom. i, 25; 2 Cor. i, 3; 
xi, 31 ; Eph. i, 3; 1 Pet. i, 3, and, for Christ God, Rom. ix, 5), is less special 
and may be addressed exceptionally toa man, Luke i, 42 (Mary : evAoynpévn ad 


ev yuvaitiv) ; Judges v, 24 (Jahel : nw JIA, edrdoynfein ev yuvartiv "Iana) ; 
Deut. xxviii, 3 (faithful Israelite AN JID, edAoynpévos aid); it is not 


122 THE. THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


St John, St Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as if they 
had agreed among themselves to do so, imperceptibly substi- 
tute the name of the Son for that of the Father: ‘‘ The Lord 
hath delivered me from every evil work and will preserve me 
[by making me enter] unto his heavenly kingdom. To whom 
be glory for ever and ever. Amen.’’! For, since it is from 
him that we expect grace, it is just that we should pay him 
honour and thank him for it: ‘‘ I give thanks to Christ Jesus 
our Lord who hath strengthened me, that he hath judged me 
faithful by establishing me in the ministry.”’ 

The attribution of doxologies to Christ is, however, excep- 
tional. When the Apostle’s thought is fixed exclusively on 
the person of Jesus Christ, he can pray to him, invoke him, 
thank him, and exalt him, as if he were the only author of 
supernatural blessings; but when he names him jointly with 
his Father, he establishes between them an order which he 
never changes. Then he thanks, implores, and glorifies God 
through Jesus Christ or in Jesus Christ. Nothing more 
natural. ‘‘ The head of every man is Christ; (as) the head 
of the woman is the man; (but) the head of Christ is God.’’? 





necessary, therefore, to see an express confession of faith in the divinity of 
Jesus Christ in the acclamation which greeted his triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem: Benedictus qui venit in momine Domint (Matt. xxi, 9; 
Mark xi, 9; Luke xix, 38 [cf. Matt. xxiii, 39 ; Luke xiii, 35]: quotation 
from Ps. cxvii, 26).—The doxology, properly so called, is on the contrary 
exclusively reserved for God, and it never accompanies the name of any 
created being whatever, angel or man. In the New Testament this is also 
the usual rule: Rom. xi, 36 (at7@ 7 Sd£a els rods aldvas: duynv); Gal. i, 5 
(& 4 Sdéa xrA); Phil. iv, 20 (T@ 6€ Oe@ nai warpi jydv 4 ddéa xr); 
Eph. iii, 215.1 Timi, 1733-1; s163)1 Pety vit; fud: 25 Apoca vise 
and two or three doubtful cases, subsequently discussed. 

1 2 Tim. iv, 18; ‘Pvoeral pe 6 Kupios amo mavtos épyou movnpod Kal cdcet 
eis tHYv BactAelay avtod THy emoupanov 7 Sdéa Ets Tovs aldvas THY aldvwr: 
aunv. It is very important to note that the other apostles have similar 
doxologies whose application to Christ is beyond doubt. Thus 2 Pet. iii, 18 
(abfdvere 5é ev yapite Kal yrodoet tod Kupiov judy Kal owrfpos *I. X. Aire 
% Sdéa Kal viv Kal eis Nyépav aidvos); Apoc. i, 6 (T@ dyandvre quads Kai 
Avoavre Huds év TH alpate adtob . . . adt@ H Sega xd). 

The Apocalypse is remarkable in this, that it unites the Son and the Father 
in the same doxology, Apoc. v, 13 (TQ xabypévy emi tH Opdvyw Kat TH apviep 
9 €vAoyia KTA); vii, 10 (} owrnpia TH Oc judv... Kai TH dpviw). In 
view of these facts, we can only understand the doxology of Heb. xiii, 20, 21 
as referring to Christ (6 5€ Oeds tis eipyvns, 6 dvayayav Ex vexpa@v Tov 
moiseva, Ta mpopdTwy Tov péyay ev alate Siabyxns aiwviov, rov Kupiov nydv 
*Inootv . . . modv ev jpiv TO evdpeotov évwmov avrod dia “J. X., db 7 
Sd£a eis rods aldvas THY aidvwvr auyv), for the relative @ refers naturally to 
the nearest word, and moreover all the emphasis of the discourse rests upon 
the mediation of Christ. Less clear is the case of 1 Pet. iv, 11 (iva ev mécw 
Sofdlnrat 6 Oeds Sa “Inood Xprorod, G €orw 7 Sd~a Kai rd xKpatos eis rods 
atwvas THY aiwvwy> aujv), because the idea of mediation appears accessory. 
As much can ve said of Rom. xvi, 27. ; 

2x Cor. xi, 3: mavrds avdpds ) Kehadr 6 Xprords €otw, xedadty dé yuvarkds 
6 avip, xepadrn dé tod Xpiorod 6 Oeds.—It is not a question here of the 
conjugal subordination of the woman, for the precepts of Paul refer to 
all women, even the unmarried; nor of her matura/ subordination, for the 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 123 


There is here a well-defined hierarchy: God, Christ, man, 
woman. If we read the context attentively, we shall remark 
first that it is a question here of Christ as the Head of the 
Church in the system of redemption; secondly, that it con- 
cerns the relations of man and woman, viewed from the 
Christian and social standpoint. In fact, the question treated 
here concerns the conduct of women in church, a conduct 
determined by the position of women in the Church. From 
the individual point of view, the Christian woman is directly 
united to Christ the Redeemer, just as the man is, but it 
is not the same from the social point of view. Here there 
is a hierarchy to be observed in theory and to be main- 
tained in practice. As Head of the Church, Christ is directly 
dependent upon God, of whom he is the envoy and man- 
datory. The man is directly dependent upon Christ, whom 
he represents in the sacred functions of the ecclesiastical 
hierarchy; and the woman—married or unmarried—is 
directly dependent on the man, who alone has a part in 
the government of the Church. And this subordination is 
to be shown outwardly, in religious gatherings, by the veil, 
a symbol of dependence, with which the woman is to cover 
her head, and also by the fact that she is forbidden to 
prophesy, or to teach or speak in public in the presence of 
the faithful and their pastors. 

God is, therefore, the Head of Christ the Mediator, and it 
is in this relation that they are usually considered when they 
are named together in the doxologies and solemn prayers. 
Paul looks for grace, mercy, and other spiritual blessings 
simultaneously from the Son and from the Father, and he 
can ask the Father or the Son for them with equal readiness. * 
But he seems to have established a regular rule for our prayers 
when he says to the Colossians: ‘* All whatsoever you 
do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him... .’” 
Since ‘‘ all the promises of God have become Yea in him ”’ 
it is eminently just that we should address “‘ by him the 
Amen” of our benedictions.* Perhaps, an anxiety not to do 


Le ee ee a a a aS SSE IE SE SOE Rl 


Apostle is thinking only of the Christian woman ; nor of individual sub- 
ordination, for all Christians are equal in Christ and depend directly on him 
(Gal. iii, 28); it is a question, therefore, of her soctal and religious sub- 
ordination (1 Cor. xiv, 34; 1 Tim. ii, 12). Further on, it is true, Paul con- 
firms this subordination by the story of the creation (1 Cor. xi, 8, 9: the man 
is the image and glory of God and the woman is the glory of man ; cf. 1 Tim. 
ii, 13, 14) : but this is in an entirely different order of ideas. 

1 In the opening formula of many of the Epistles: xapes tpiv Kal eipyvn 
and Qc0d matpos judv xai Kupiov *Incot Xpiorod (Rom. i, 7; 1 Cor. 1, 3; 
2 Cor. i, 2; Gal. i, 3; Eph. i, 2; Phil. i, 2; 1 Thess. i, 1; 2 Thess. i, 2; 
1 Tim. i, 2; 2 Tim. i, 2; Tit. i, 4; Philem. 3), and sometimes elsewhere 
(Eph. vi, 23 ; 1 Thess. iii, 11 ; 2 Thess. ii, 16). 

* Col. iii, 17. 3 2 Cor. i, 20. 


124 THE THEOLOGY .OF-ST PAUL 


an injury, even in appearance only, to the strict maintenance 
of Hebrew monotheism has something to do with this usage 
introduced by the apostles and subsequently adopted by the 
Church, a usage which moreover, as we have seen, does not 
prevent Paul from occasionally praying separately to the Son 
and from sometimes addressing to him the doxologies 

reserved for God alone.? | 


IlII—JEsus Curist Gop 


1. The Divinity of Christ and Pagan Apotheoses. 2. Four Illuminating 
Texts. 3. Synthetic View. 


1. All the ancient civilizations—of Chaldea, Egypt, China, 
Persia, and India—deified-their kings. Alexander the Great, 
in seizing the territory of those ancient monarchies, appro- 
priated to himself the honorary titles of their sovereigns. 
Naturally the generals who divided up his states among 
themselves also inherited his titles. After them the Czsars, 
although at first avoiding openly offending Roman ideas, 
soon lent themselves to an apotheosis which served their 
political policy without shocking oriental customs. A begin- 
ning was made by deifying the emperors after death; subse- 
quently divine honours were paid to them even while alive. — 
If they do not seem to have cared much for the name of 
‘* Lord,’’ so dear to the Ptolemies and Herods, they had no 
scruples about letting themselves be called ‘‘ God-Saviour, 
Saviour, and God,’’ or simply ‘‘God’’; and also, if the 
father already enjoyed apotheosis, ‘‘ God, Son of God.’’? 


1 These conclusions concerning prayer to Christ are admitted in substance 
by many Protestant authors : Chase (The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church 
in Texts and Studies, vol. i, fasc. 3, Cambridge, 1891); Seeberg (Die 
Anbetung des Herrn bet Paulus, Riga, 1891. Zahn (Dre Anbetung Jesu 
zm ZLettalter der Apostel, in Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche*, 
Leipzig, 1908, pp. 271-398). E. von der Goltz (Das Gebet in der Gltesten 
Christenhett, Leipzig, 1901) admits in general the theses of Zahn and 
Seeberg ; but he insists on the exceptional character of these invocations 
and seeks for the explanation in the hypothesis that the name “‘ Lord ”’ 
was applied to both the Father and the Son without a clear distinction of 
persons. Is it not simpler and more natural to believe that it is on account 
of the identity of their nature ? 

2 See Beurlier, Le culte impérial, etc., Paris, 1891 (with the Latin thesis 
of the same author), and Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, etc., Tiibingen, 1908, 
Pp. 243-276. * 

We will cite only one curious example, taken from the Excavations in 
Cyprus in the Journal of Hellen. Stud., vol. ix, 1888, p. 243. King 
Ptolemy VI, surnamed Philometor and claiming to be called God, had 
dedicated to Venus of Paphos this votive inscription : 


BAXIAEA IITTOAEMAION 
@EON ®IAOMHTOPA 
ITAPIAI 


Subsequently, the original inscription was beaten out with a hammer, and 
this pedestal was usurped for the goddess Julia, daughter of Augustus, God, 
Son of God: 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST ¥25 


Domitian, however, appears to have been the first, after the 
madman Caligula, to have himself called Dominus et deus 
noster! even in his capital. 

The Christians always repudiated with indignation these 
impious pretensions. The profanation of divine names and 
attributes inspired them with invincible horror. When the 
author of the Apocalypse says to the angel of Pergamus that 
he ‘‘ dwells where the seat of Satan is,’’? one cannot help 
thinking of the first temple erected to the god Augustus and 
the goddess Roma, a temple of dazzling marble which rose 
upon the summit of the acropolis of Pergamus; dominating 
the plain of the Caicus and visible for a great distance in all 
directions. The protest of St Paul against the deification of 
men is not less energetic : 


There is no God but one. For though there be that are called 
gods [by an abuse of language] either in heaven or on earth; so that 
men speak of gods many and lords many ; yet to us there is but one God, 
the Father, of whom are all things and we unto him: and one Lord Jesus 
Christ by whom are all things and we [are Christians] by him.* 


So, when we see the Apostle giving to Christ the name and 
the attributes of God, we are far from thinking of pagan 
apotheoses, repudiated by him with so much force, and we 
give to these expressions the only meaning which Hebrew 
monotheism authorizes, added to the personal distinctions 
established in the depths of the divine life by the Christian 
revelation. 


2. Four texts, taken purpose:y from all the epistolary 
groups, may teach us Paul’s constant notion of the pre- 
existent Christ. Jesus Christ is ‘‘ exalted above all, God 
blessed for ever’’; he is ‘‘ our great God and Saviour ’’ ; in 
him ‘‘ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead ’’ ; finally, he is 
‘‘ subsisting in the form of God.’’ Let us briefly examine the 
import of these testimonies. 

From the heart of Israel has come ‘“‘ according to the 
flesh, Christ who is exalted above all, God blessed for 
ever.”’4 This phrase refers so clearly to Christ, whose 
transcendent and divine nature it explains, that it has never 
been understood differently by Christian tradition. In the 





(IOY) AIAN @EAN ZSEBAZTH(N) 
@YTATEPA AYTOKPATOPO(2) 
KAIZAPOS @EOY YIOY @EOY xri. 


1 Suetonius, Domit., xiii: Dominus ac deus noster sic fiert jubet. 

2 Apoc. ii, 13: Scéio ubi habttas ubt sedes (Opdvos) est Satanae. 

$ 1 Cor. viii, 5,6. Cf. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, p. 255-258. 

‘ Rom. ix, 5: é& dv 6 Xpictds 76 Kard odpxa, 6 dv emi mdvrwv, Beds 
edAoynrés els rods aldvas: dufv. For the textual criticism see Sanday, Zpsstle 
to the Romans ; for the exegesis and Patristic tradition, A. Durand, Ze 
divinité de J.-C. dans S. Paul; Rom. ix, 5 (Revue biblique, vol. xii, 1903, 
Pp. 550-570). 


126 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


East, St Dionysius of Alexandria and the bishops who signed 
the synodal letter against Paul of Samosata, St Athanasius, 
St Basil, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Epiphanius, St Cyril of 
Alexandria; in the West, St Irenzus, St Hippolytus, 
Tertullian, Novatian, St Cyprian, St Hilary, St Ambrose, 
St Jerome: the Greek and Latin commentators, Origen, 
Ambrosiaster, Pelagius, St Chrysostom, Theodore of 
Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and the rest do not even suspect 
that any other meaning could be given to it. One must come 
down to Photius to find a dissenting voice ; for all that can be 
concluded from the silence of Arius, Diodorus of Tarsus, and 
the Arianizing writers of the fourth century is that our text 
embarrassed them and that they avoided quoting it, as an 
objection fatal to their thesis. Certain modern exegetes are 
less scrupulous. They arbitrarily put a period either after 
*“Christ according to the flesh,’? or before ‘‘ God blessed 
for ever’’; and they obtain a fragment of a phrase which 
they translate thus: 

A. He who is above all [is] God blessed for ever. 

B. God who is above all [is (or) may he be] blessed for ever. 

C. God [is (or) may he be] blessed for ever. 

Everyone will agree that this kind of trimming gives to 
the phrase an awkward appearance and a strange turn. 
Assuredly it would never have occurred to anyone who was 
not already fully persuaded that Paul cannot call Christ God, 
and that he never addresses a doxology to him. If this 
double hypothesis were justified, the conclusion drawn from 
it would none the less be a fallacy, and would make it neces- 
sary for the same reason to expunge from the teaching of St 
Paul all the assertions which appear only once in his 
writings; but the whole hypothesis is as false as it is 
gratuitous: the Apostle does sometimes give to Christ the 
name of God and does address him doxologies. Moreover, 
our text is not, strictly speaking, a doxology; it is an affirma- 
tion pure and simple of the supereminent dignity of Christ, 
ending in an Amen of benediction and praise. The Amen 
alone, if you like, forms the whole doxology. It is easy to 
show that the construction imagined by the rationalists is 
contrary to logic and grammar. It is not. the excellence of 
the Father, but that of the Son, which the passage is to make 
prominent. The words ‘‘ according to the flesh ’’ prepare us 
for an antithesis: we expect a second aspect of the portrait 
of Christ; the phrase ‘‘ who is above all, God blessed for 
ever’’ fulfils our expectation; it completes the image of the 
Saviour and finishes by an admirable stroke the picture of the 
prerogatives of the Jews: the descent from Israel, the adop- 
tion of sons, the sensible presence of God, the Law trans- 
mitted by angels, the legitimate manner of worship, messianic 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 127 


promises, the blood of the patriarchs, and human kinship 
with Jesus Christ, whose superior nature is poured out in 
glory upon them. For the detached phrase to be a doxology 
referring to the Father, it would be necessary either that 
the word ‘‘ blessed ’’ be given a prominent position instead of 
being submerged in the sentence, or else that the phrase 
should commence with a verb in the optative mood; a 
doxology, like the one proposed to us, in order to alter the 
natural meaning of St Paul, would be unexampled in the 
Greek language. The unusual construction, with which 
the third explanation comes into conflict, becomes entangled 
with the other two by a solecism.’ It is, therefore, not sur- 
prising that the Greek Fathers, who know their language a 
little better than our modern exegetes, do not mention it, 
even to refute it. 

Jesus Christ is not God in an unwarranted, participated, or 
analogous way; he is exalted above everything that is not 
God. As this quality of sovereign God can belong to one 
being only, the Son must necessarily be consubstantial with 
the Father and identical with him in nature. Paul will find 
nothing nobler to say of Christ when, at the very end of his 
career, he writes to Titus: ‘‘ Looking for the blessed hope 
and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ (rod peydéAou Oeot Kai cwrijpos nyav Xpiorov "Inorov).? 
It is consoling to see the exegetes of our day coming back 
more and more to the traditional interpretation. If it were a 
question of the Father, the Apostle would not add to God the 
epithet of ‘‘ great,’’ which naturally is the principle of 
divinity. Moreover, the parousia is always the glorious 
manifestation of the Son coming to judge the world, never 


1 The participle of the verb “ to be,’’ preceded by the definite article and 
followed by a preposition with its objective case, never qualifies a noun. 
One can say 6 emi mavrwy, or 6 él mdvrwy Beds, or again 6 wv emi mavTwv 
but not 6 dv émi mdvrwy Beds, taking 6 for the article of @eds. In this 
expression the word @eds is necessarily in apposition with 6 dv émi mdvrwv, 
and then the article with the present participle is equivalent to a relative 
referring to the noun which precedes, here therefore to Jesus Christ. 

* Titus ii, 13: mpooSexdpevor tHv paxaplav Aida Kai émddverav Tis 
. 86éns 720 peydAov Geos Kal owripos yydv Xpioroé *Ino0d.—Supposing 
that rod @eod designates God the Father, the absence of the article before 
awripos %4av would be an intolerable mistake. For the same reason, 
2 Pet. i, 1 (€v Scxatoodvy rot Geot judy Kat owripos *I. X.) must be under- 
stood of Christ only. It must be added that at this time the expression 
@ess «al owrhp was very much used as an honorary title. Moreover, 7 
émpdvera ths 5d&ns clearly designates the glorious second coming of Christ. 
This fact is being more and more recognized. The Anglican revised version 
has corrected the old translation thus: our great God and Saviour (instead 
of “the great God and our Saviour’’). Weizsacker also translates: Dze 
Erscheinung der Herrlichkett unseres grossen Gottes und Heilandes Jesus 
Christus. Most modern commentators, even Protestants, support this 
exegesis, Cf. B. Weiss, Meyers Kommentar’ 


128 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


that of the Father. Fuinally—and this argument is decisive 
—the two titles ‘‘ great God’’ and ‘‘ Saviour,’’ being in- 
cluded in Greek under the same definite article, must refer 
to the same person; to be able to isolate them and to connect 
the second only to Jesus Christ, this latter name would have 
to be placed between the two. To object to this testimony 
under the pretext that Jesus Christ is not God and that St 
Paul should not have called him so, is to give up working 
as an exegete and to entrench oneself behind a prejudiced 
position of obstinate negation. 

However illuminating these texts are, they are still only 
rapid flashes of accidental light. It is in the Epistles of the 
captivity that the portrait of the pre-existent Christ is set 
forth in the most admirable relief. Nothing more resembles 
the prologue of St John than the christological passages of 
the Epistle to the Colossians. The parallelism goes further 
than the order of ideas, and extends even to their expression : 
in both Christ is presented as a fountain of graces, the fulness 
of which overflows upon the entire race, and the union of 
divinity and humanity in his person is affirmed by a formula 
of equal boldness. But, while St John is pleased to consider 
the Logos in the bosom of the divine light, of which he is the 
eternal radiance, St Paul prefers to contemplate Christ at 
the head of humanity which he ransoms, and of the creation 
to which he restores its primitive harmony. For his principal 
aim, determined by the controversy with the false teachers of 
Colosse, is to show that Christ is first in all things, as man 
and as God, in time and in eternity ; therefore he heaps upon 
his person, without troubling himself too much about their 
logical or chronological order, the honourable titles, excep- 
.tional qualifications, dignities, and prerogatives which put 
him absolutely beyond comparison and confer upon him a 
supereminent primacy. 

Thus Christ is “‘ the well-beloved Sop ’’ necessarily unique, 
and by virtue of this quality disposing of the kingdom of his 
Father as his kingdom.—He is the ‘‘ image of the invisible 
God,’’ the living portrait of the heavenly Father, alone 
perfectly resembling his archetype and capable of reveal- 
ing him to men, because he alone knows the Father as he 
is known by him.—He “‘ is the firstborn of every creature,”’ 
because he existed before every creature.—He is the Creator 
and preserver of all things; and no created being, how- 
ever exalted he may be in the heavenly hierarchies, escapes 
his creative activity or his providence.—He is the “ sovereign 
head of the Church,’’ the author of redemption and the 
remission of sins, the firstborn among the dead and the 
firstfruits of the resurrection, because, having to possess 
the primacy in all things, no pre-eminence can be wanting in 
him.—He possesses the plenitude of the graces requisite for 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 129 


filling his role of universal reconciler and pacificator.’— 
Finally, as a last characteristic, ‘‘ all the fulness of the God- 
head dwelleth in hint bodily.’’? We must not confound this 
text with the preceding one; they differ entirely; in one it 
was the plenitude of graces, in the other it is the plenitude 
of divinity; in the former it was a plenitude resting on the 
person of Christ, in the latter it is a plenitude which dwells 
in the body of Christ. The word employed by St Paul is not 
ambiguous: ‘‘ all the fulness of the Godhead” can be only 
the divine nature itself. 

It is, however, the great christological text in the Epistle 
to the Philippians which gives the most complete expression 
of Paul’s thought. The Apostle, wishing to give his disciples 
an example of self-abnegation and to show them that volun- 
tary humiliation is a seed of glory, sets before them the 
three stages—the divine life, the life of trial, and the glorified 
life—through which Christ Jesus passed: ‘‘ Who, being in 
the form of God, thought it not robbery to be [treated as] 
equal with God:—but emptied himself, taking the form 
of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in 
habit found as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient 
unto death, even to the death of the cross; for which cause 
God also hath exalted him and hath given him a name which 
is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under 
the earth: and that every tongue should confess that the. 
Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.’’® 

In each of these three stages of majesty, humility, and 
glory there are, as it were, two distinct phases. Before all 
ages Christ was in the form of God and was very God b 
that fact, for the form of God belongs to his essence; and, 
as God, he had a right to divine honours as well as his 
Father (1d «iva: ica Oc@). This majesty did not prevent him 
from stooping down to us; he emptied himself ( éxévworev 
éavrév), not by rejecting the divine form, which was in- 
separable from his being, but by concealing his divine form 
under his human form and by renouncing thus for a time the 
divine honours which were due him; he humbled himself 
(érareivworev éavtdv) still more than his condition as man re- 
quired, by submitting to death and the most ignominious 
of deaths. In order to give to his voluntary renunciation a 
proportionate recompense, God now compels every created 
being to render homage to him and to confess his triumph. 


3. At the risk of anticipating somewhat the contents of the 
following chapter, let us try to outline the principal features 
of this image. 

2 Col. i, 13, 20. See Vol. I, pp. 287-92. 
2 Col. ii, 9. See below pp. 151-2. 
2 Phil. ii, 6-11. See Vol. I, pp. 311-6, and note I, pp. 456-65. 
IL 9 


130 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Christ belongs to an order superior to every created being,* 
he is himself the creator? and preserver of the world ;° all is 
by him, in him, and for him.* He is the efficient, exemplary, 
and final cause of all that exists, and is therefore God. 

Christ is the image of the invisible Father ;° he is the 
Son of God, but not like the other sons; he is so in an 
incommunicable way; he is the Son, God’s own Son, the 
Beloved, and he has always been so.® He proceeds, there- 
fore, from the divine essence, and is consubstantial with the 
Father. 

Christ is the object of doxologies reserved for God ;7 
Christians pray to him as well as to the Father ;° they expect 
from him blessings which it is in the power of God alone to 
confer—grace, mercy, and salvation;® before him every knee 
must bow in heaven, on earth, and in hell,’° as every knee 
bends in adoration before the majesty of the Most High. 

Christ possesses all the divine attributes: he is eternal, 
since he is the firstborn of every creature and existed before 
all the ages ;'* he is immutable, since he is in the form of 
God ;** he is all-powerful, since he has the power to make 
fruitful even nothingness ;!° he is immeasurable, since he 
fills the universe ;!* he is infinite, since the fulness of the 
Godhead dwelleth in him, or rather, he is the fulness of the 
Godhead ;?° all that is the special property of God belongs to 
him as the rightful owner ; the tribunal of God is the tribunal 
of Christ,+® the Gospel of God is the Gospel of Christ,!7 the 
Church of God is the Church of Christ,1® the kingdom of God 
is the kingdom of Christ,!° and the Spirit of God is the Spirit 
of Christ.?° | 

Christ is the only Lord ;?! he identifies himself with the 
Jehovah of the old Covenant ;?? he is the God who has 
redeemed the Church with his own blood ;?* he is ‘‘ our great 
God and Saviour Jesus Christ ’’;?4 he is even ‘‘ God exalted 


po tiDi. kee i set OlaitG: Color 7 

+ ColPis 16017: 852 Corsiv,i43\Colii, 45. 

* 2 Cor. i, 19; Rom. viii, 3-32 ; Col. i, 13 ; Eph. i, 6, etc. 

7 Rom. ix, § ; xvi, 27 ; 2 Tim. iv, 18. Hymns: 1 Tim. iii, 16 ; Eph. v, 14. 
2 Cor. xii, 8,9 ; Rom. x, 12-14; 1 Cor. i, 2. 

Rom. -3,°7 5,,Cor: 1,33) 2, Cor..i,, 2). phal, 2. ePhilt1.<2 soles 
Philem. 3 ; 2 Thess. i, 2; 1 Tim. i, 2; Titus i, 4—Rom. xvi, 20; 1 Cor. xvi, 23; 
2 Cor, xiii, 13; Gal. vi, 18; Eph. vi, 23; Phil. iv, 23; 1 Thess. v, 28; 
2 Thess. iii, 18 ; Philem. 25, etc. 


aS Phils ie: pCOh 125217. 
$35 PF gl -aiv6- Se COs a0: 
14 Eph. iv, 10; Col. ii, ro. A Col. silo: 


*® Rom. xiv, 10 (of God) ; 2 Cor. v, 10 (of Christ). 

*7 Rom. i, 1; xv, 16 (of God) ; Rom, i, 9; 1 Cor. ix, 12 (of Christ). 
8 1 Cor. 1, 2 ; x, 32, etc. (of God) ; Rom. xvi, 16 (of Christ). 

ad dA Dy elie Ae 20 Rom. viii, 9. 

a Ti Corawili..0- 

"et Cor, x, 479. C7.  Coraisr6 ; ix, 21:5 Rom. x, 13) 

*S Acts xx, 28. Sse iUSHier 3. 


THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST Lat 


above all things,’’! dominating all created things by his 
infinite transcendence. If he is not called God without an 
epithet, it is- because God, in the language of Paul, denotes 
the person of the Father, and because a personal identity 
between the Father and the Son is contradictory. 


* Rom. ix, 5. 


CHAPTER II 
RELATIONS OF THE PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 


I—Tue TRINITY IN UNITY 


1. The Persons placed in Juxtaposition by Co-ordination. 2. Intervening 
in the Working of their Eternal Relations. 


6¢ HE theology of St Paul,’’ writes Sabatier, 

. ‘does not end like traditional theology; the 

dogma of the.Trinity lies outside its sphere.’’ 

A very decisive affirmation, somewhat modified, 

it is true, by the following concession: ‘* Paul 

succeeds, however, in formulating some distinctions in the 

divine activity, which can be regarded as the point of 

departure of subsequent speculations and_ ecclesiastical 

metaphysics.’’t On the other hand, other liberal and 

rationalistic critics are struck by what they call the Apostle’s 
trinitarian conception. Let us see if they are right. 

1. The number of cases in which the three divine Persons 
are united in the same text is a surprising and unexpected 
phenomenon. Thirty such can be counted.? Not only are the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit constantly named 
together, without there being in this enumeration any fixed 
order, but they are distinguished from any and every creature 
and are placed in the category of the divine being. If we 
do not look in St Paul for the technical terms of present 
theology: ‘‘ nature, substance, person’’ and still less ‘‘ sub- 
sistence, consubstantiality, circumincession,’’ we find in him 
a fund of ideas and mutual relations, destined, one day, to 
render the uniform adoption of all those terms necessary. 
Let us examine closely some of the texts in question, regret- 
ting, however, not to be able to gather them close together, 
for they lose much of their convincing force by the very fact 
of their isolation : 


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
and the love of God [the Father] 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.* 


1 A. Sabatier, L’ Apétre Paul*, Paris, 1896, p. 366. 
2 In Note S, at the end of this work, we Eyall rapidly run over all those 
which are not studied here. 
AO MCOTASLL 4 
‘H xapis. Tod Kuptov *"Inaot Xptroroé 
Kal 7 dydan Tob Geo 
Kal ) Kowwria Too dylov IIvevparos pera ndvrwy vyudv. 
132 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 133 


It is probable that it is a question here of the communion 
of which the Holy Spirit is the agent, and not of the com- 
munion of which he is the object; but this shade of meaning 
matters little. Paul attributes to the Son alone the grace 
which elsewhere he loves to refer to the Son and the Father 
conjointly ; then goes back to the original source of grace— 
namely, to the active love of the Father which comprises and 
represents the whole divine nature; finally, he descends: to 
the effective distribution of the graces which belongs to the 
Guest of the just soul, to the Spirit of sanctity. The 
three Persons, therefore, each in his appropriate sphere, 
together contribute to the common work of salvation, and 
their habitual order is changed, either to show that it does 
not imply essential inequality, or rather by virtue of the 
association of ideas. No less remarkable is the following 
text : 

There are diversities of charismata, but the same Spzrzt ; 
and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord ; 


and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, 
who worketh all in all. 





The only exegetical difficulties of this text are the exact value of the 
genitives and the precise meaning of xowwvia. As the first two genitives 
are certainly subjective (the love which God has for us and the grace of 
which Jesus Christ is the dispenser), it is a fréori very probable that the third 
genitive is subjective also: xowwvia will, therefore, have to be understood 
in the active sense (that which is the work of the Holy Spirit) and not in the 

assive sense (the Holy Spirit communicated). Oecumenius, copied by 

heophylact, explains the terms thus : ‘‘ He wishes for them the grace of the 
Son, by which he has saved us freely, having been sacrificed for us: and the 
Jove with which the Father loved us, when he delivered up his only Son for 
us: and the communion of the Holy Ghost, namely his participation and 
reception (olov rv peroxny atrod Kal perdAnyw), by which we are all sanctified” 
(CXVIII, 1088). 

If the sense of the genitive [Zvevparos were objective, as Oecumenius seems 
to suppose, the meaning of xowwvia would be “ common possession of the 
Holy Ghost ’’; if it is subjective, as we think, the meaning of xowwvia will 
be “ mutual communication, union of minds and hearts,’”’ produced in the 
faithful by the unction of the Spirit (cf. Gal. ii, 9 : 5efta xowwvias, Acts ii, 42 : 
mpocxaprepoovres . . . TH Kowwvig, Rom. xv, 26; 2 Cor. viii, 4, and Heb. 
xiii, 16, where xowvwvia is joined to edzotia as a synonym). 

These shades of meaning do not weaken the proof in favour of the Trinity 
which the Fathers—among others St John Chrysostom and Theodoret— 
derive from this passage. Harnack writes of this text (Zutstehung und 
Entwickelung der Kirchenverfassung, etc., Leipzig, 1910, p. 187): Zwar 
bietet sie [die trinitarische Formel] Paulus noch nicht als solemne oder gar 
exklusive Formel, aber er bietet sie doch. Very good: but why not solemn 
and exclusive ? 

11 Cor. xii, 4-6: Avaipéces 8€ xaptouarwy eiolv, 76 S€ avro [Ivedpa 
xat Siaipécets Staxovidy etow, Kat 6 atros Kuptos: xat dvaipécers 
evepynpdtwy elolv, 6 Se atros eds 6 evepydv Ta marta ev madow. 

The word 8:atpéors signifies “ division’? rather than “ difference,’ but 
the difference results from the division. The difference refers to the various 
charismata, the divers ministries and the different operations, but does not 
imply the diversity of operations, ministries and chartsmata compared with 
one another. Thus the Greek commentators regard these three words as 
synonyms or, more exactly, as applying to the same objects. It is better to 


134 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


We should not think here of an ascending scale and a 
sphere of unequal activity, in which the Holy Spirit, here 
named first and put into relation with the charismata only, is 
inferior to the other two. There are three reasons against 
this. The ministries and the operations can be, and some- 
times are, included under the general name of charismata. 
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit distributes to each, according 
to: his good pleasure, all the spiritual gifts, in the number of 
which operations are particularly mentioned. Finally, 
although the operations, works of power, are naturally re- 
ferred to the Father as belonging to him, and although the 
ministries are specially attributed to the Son, the ever-living 
Head of the Church, all these graces, being the common 
property of the three divine Persons, are awarded now to 
one, now to another, according to the subject and the 
occasion. We do not even perceive here that sort of 
hierarchy of the Persons observable in some other passages. 


2. Instead of being in juxtaposition by co-ordination, as in 
the texts quoted above, the Persons often appear in the dis- 
charge of their eternal relations or missions, which they 
receive from one another : 


When the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a 
woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem them who were 
under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because 
you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying : 
Abba, Father! Therefore thou art not a servant, but a son, and if a 
son, an heir also through God.! 








distinguish them separately ; the operations will then be the graces of healing, 
the gift of miracles and similar favours ; the mzzstrzes will denote the spiritual 
gifts which have to do with the active service of the Church or of its members ; 
the charzsmata will include, besides the two preceding categories, all the 
gratiae gratis datae, the enumeration of which follows : the gift of tongues, 
the discernment of spirits, the gift of interpretation, etc. In fact, the Apostle 
three times (1 Cor. xii, 9, 28, 33) calls yxaptopara laydrwy the gifts of healing, 
which it would be necessary rather to name evepyjuara (cf. 1 Cor. xii, 10), 
if the charismata did not embrace all the other graces. He closes his list 
of charismata, operations and ministries by saying: ‘‘ But seek zealously 
for the greater chartsmaza,’’ which proves again that the name charismata 
is the most comprehensive term. 

1 Gal. iv, 6; ore 5é €ore viol, 

eLaréateirev 6 Beds +d [Ivedpa rot Yiob adrod ets ras xapdias judy, xpatov: 
* ABBG, 6 marnp: ware ovKére ef SodAos GANG vids: et Sé vids Kal KAnpovojos 
Tob Geod. 

The two most striking features of this passage are the two sendings of the Son 
and the Holy Spirit by the Father, with the effects of these sendings. The 
Apostle has just said that God, in the fulness of times, sent his Son (verse 4) : 
eanéoreiev Tov Yidov avrov. This sending of the Son coincides with the 
incarnation: in the verb éfaméoreiev each of the two component particles 
can retain its own value, dwé marking the going away, the passage from 
heaven to earth, and é« the emission or origin, although perhaps we ought 
not to insist too much on these shades of expression. Paul now says that God 
sent (e{améoretAer) his Spirit, called also the Spirit of the Son: it is a question 
here of a temporary and incidental sending of the Spirit into the just soul ; 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 135 


Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 
For you have not received the spirit of bondage [to fill you] again with 
fear ; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we 
cry, Abba, Father! For the Spirit himself unites with our spirit to 
bear witness that we are the sons of God; and if sons, heirs also: 
heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.} 


These two texts ought not to be separated, for they 
mutually throw light upon each other; in both it is God the 
Father who sends the Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Son, 
and, therefore, is sent also by the Son; in both the adoption 
of sons is attributed to the Holy Spirit, to the Son and to the 
Father ; finally, in both the presence of the Spirit presupposes 
filial adoption with all the rights which it brings with it, 
and the filial adoption presupposes the presence of the Spirit 
of God, without our being able to say with certainty which 
has the logical priority. 

Sometimes the relations seem still closer; what has just 
been affirmed of one person is, a moment later, affirmed of 
the other, or the simultaneous co-operation of the three is 
expressed as a function of their personal relations in the 
heart of the divine life. This is especially true when it is a 
question of the sanctification of souls: 

God . . . saved us by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the 


Holy Ghost, whom he hath poured forth upon us abundantly through 
Jesus Christ our Saviour.® 





this is not the first time that the Holy Spirit has taken possession of the soul, 
but is the testimony of the divine indwelling manifesting itself by the 
charismatical gifts. Instead of “‘ because you are sons,” many translate : 
“for a proof] that (67+) you are sons.” 

1 Rom. viii, 14: dcoe yap IIvevpart Qeod dyovrat, obrot viol elor Beod: 

15. od yap eddBere mvedua Sovrcias mddAw els PdBov, adda eAdfere mvedua 
viobeaias ev @ kpaloper: ’ABBG, 6 marnp. 

16. Atré 76 [Ivedpa ovppaprupet 7h mvedpare hudy ort eopev réxva Oeod- 

17. ef 8& réxva, Kal KAnpovdporr KAnpovdpot pev Geod, avyxAnpovdpo. 8e 
Xpiorov. 

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are mentioned together with the 
personal attributes that distinguish them. The Holy Spirit, represented 
as a supernatural moving power (verse 14), renders testimony to our sonship 
in relation to the Father, and to joint-heirship with relation to the Son. 
Father, son, heir, joint-heir being essentially personal notions, the Son who 
is the heir of the Father, since we are his co-heirs, cannot be one and the same 
Person with the Father ; and the Holy, Spirit, who attests our relations with 
the Father and the Son, must be distinct from the Father and the Son. Our 
spirit—that is to say, the supernatural instinct produced in us by the Holy 
Spirit—testifies that we are sons by our uttering the filial cry : 46a, Father. 
But to this subjective testimony is joined that of the Holy Spirit himself 
(cuppaprupet=testifies wth). The Greek Fathers saw this clearly: the 
Latin Fathers, following the Vulgate (destimonium reddit spirttut nostro) 
thought it meant a testimony rendered by the Holy Spirit Zo our spirit. But 
this divergence does not affect the present question. 

2 Titus iii, 4-6 : “Ore 8& 4 xpnotérns Kal 4 pravOpenia émepavn Tob awripos 
jyav Beod .. . Eswoev juds dia Aovrpod maduyyevecias Kal avaxawwaews 
IIlvedparos dylov, ob etéxeev &d” huds mAovoiws Sia *Inaod Xptotot tot awtijpos 
;cov.—The whole effect of baptismal regeneration, instead of being attri- 
buted to the three Persons by co-ordination, as in Matt. xxviii, 19, is here 


136 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


It is clearly a question here of the fruits of baptism : initial 
salvation, regeneration, and renovation. God the Father 
initiates them purely by an act of his mercy without any 
regard to the merits which we did not have and of which we 
were incapable, and he produces these effects by the bestowal 
of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, regeneration and 
renovation belong to the sanctifying Spirit (raAcyyeveotas Kat 
dvakawwcews IIvevparos ayiov) which is poured out upon 
us by God the Father, and at the same time by Jesus Christ, 
called by virtue of this our Saviour. Thus the baptismal re- 
birth is due to the Father of mercies, as the first source of 
divine being (it is he who is the subject of the whole phrase : 
érwoev, e€éxecev); it is due also to Jesus Christ as mediator 
(a "Inoot Xpucrod) ; and it is due in the last analysis to the 
Holy Spirit as the common envoy of the Father and the Son 
(od eféxeev Sc). All that had been indicated—but less clearly 
—in a declaration which recalls the trinitarian formula of 
baptism: ‘‘ You are washed, you are sanctified, you are 
justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit 
of our God.’’! St Paul never has baptismal grace in mind 
without the co-operation of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost. 

The three Persons similarly intervene in the conferring and 
exercise of the apostolate : 


He that confirmeth us with you in Chvést .. is God, who also hath 
sealed us, and given the pledge of the Spzrzt.? 





attributed by subordination : the Father sanctifies, zz the Spirit, by the Son.— 
The, so to speak, immediate sanctifier is the Holy Spirit: 61a Aourpod 
swaduyyevectas Kat avaxawwoews IIvedp. ayiov. Baptism is a “bath of re- 
generation,” because it produces instrumentally a second birth of the spiritual 
order: and this regeneration is explained by a synonym, “the renovation of 
the Holy Ghost ’’; he it is who gives to the water of baptism its power to 
regenerate.—The intermediary sanctifier is Jesus Christ: our Saviour; for 
on the one hand he sends the Spirit and on the other he is Himself sent by the 
Father.—The primordial sanctifier is the Father, to whom is attributable 
the initiative of salvation ; he is moved only by his pity (xara 70 atrot €eos), 
by his goodness (¢:AavOpwria), and by his gentleness (ypnordrns) ; he saves us 
by sending his Son and by giving us through him his Spirit, without regard 
to works accomplished in a state of justice, impossible works, since the — 
state of justice did not yet exist. For details cf. Meyer-Weiss (Die Briefe 
Pauli an Timotheus und Titus’, Gottingen, 1902), or Belser (Dze Briefe an 
Timotheus und Titus, Fribourg i. B., 1907). 
2a1(Gor, Vi, LLak DeCiy Ol. 4 Dal7i« 
* 2 Cor. i, 21-22: 
6 Se PeBarcdv Huds ovv tyutv eis Xprordv 
Kal xpicas Has Oeds, 6 cal odpaytodpevos nuds 
_ nat dods Tov dppaBdva rob IIvevvaros. 

It is necessary to observe that us (yds, 7udv) denotes only Paul and his 
colleagues. This appears from the whole context and in particular from the 
phrase “ wth you’ (ovv tyiv). It is not, therefore, a question of confirma- 
tion, common to all the faithful, but of the apostolate, peculiar only to the 
preachers of the Gospel.—Moreover, the subject of the entire phrase is, 
without any possible dispute, God the Father, since he is placed in personal 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 137 


God confirms Paul and his colleagues constantly (BeBaiav) ; 
he anointed them one day with the spirit of courage (xpicas) 
and marked them as with a seal (o¢paywdpevos), conferring 
upon them the charismata which legitimate their apostolate 
in the eyes of the faithful. This seal, this pledge, is none 
other than the Holy Spirit, the dispenser of the charismata. 
And God works this miracle by constantly directing the 
apostles towards Christ (ets Xpwrdv) and binding them to 
him by his grace. We see how the divine Persons contri- 
bute to the endowment of the preachers of the faith: the 
Father as the original author of the spiritual gifts, the Son 
as the source of their supernatural life, and the Holy Spirit 
as the seal of their mission and the pledge of their success. 

_ We find this co-operation of the three Persons in another 
text of singular force. Paul excuses himself for writing to 
the Romans with so much apostolic freedom; but by reason 
of the task which has been given him, he is: 


The minister of Christ Jesus among the Gentiles, devoted to the 
service of the Gospel of God, that the oblation of the Gentiles, sanctified 
by the Holy Ghost, may be made an acceptable [sacrifice].1 


Here the phraseology of sacrifice is plain. The Apostle 
exercises in regard to the Gentiles a kind of priesthood; he 


ee ee ee 
contrast to Christ and to the Spirit. The action of the Father is expressed 
by four participles : one in the present tense (BeBordv), denoting a permanent 
source of help which the apostles share in some measure with all Christians ; 
the other three, in the past tense, indicating a transitory act, accomplished 
once for all in the apostles only, the effects of which, however, can still endure. 

1 Rom. xv, 15, 16: 

Sud. thy xdpw riv Sodeiody por dnd rod Beod 

eis 76 elvai pe Aevroupysv Xprarod "Inood eis Ta EOvn, 
icpoupyobvra 76 evayyéduov Tod Geo, 

iva yévnrat % mpoopopa Tav Eve edrpoadextos, Hylaopevn 
év IIvetpare ayly. 

The conjunction of the five words, Acroupyds, iepoupyobvra, mpoodopa, 
edrpdodextos, Hytacpern, shows that this passage is a prolonged allegory 
or metaphor, having for its point of departure the consecration of the Gentiles 
to God in baptism, a consecration regarded under the figure of a sacrifice 
offered to God by the ministers of Christ, with the co-operation of the Spirit 
as sanctifier.—Paul takes part in this only as @ delegate of Christ to the 
Gentiles : Aevroupyés signifies generally “a sacred minister *? (Heb. viii, 1, 2 : 
Jesus Christ is dpyvepevs and tév ayiwv Aetrovpyés) ; but in the Septuagint 
this word often denotes a minister of inferior rank (oi ‘epets Kat ot Aevroupyot 
=priests and levites).—The role of Paul is only preparatory and indirect ; 
icpoupyetvy means “‘ to perform a sacred rite,” or else “‘ to exercise a sacred 
ministry in regard to something,’’ and is construed with the accusative 
(iepovpyav 76 edayyéAov=“ being a sacred minister of the Gospel,’’ who 
prepares the Gentiles to be offered to God).—The words 7) zpoogopa ra&v €bvwv 
are a genitive of apposition : “‘ the offering, the sacrifice, of which the Gentiles 
are the subject and the material.”—Under the old Law every victim offered 
up according to the prescribed rules was pleasing to God (edmpdadexros, 
acceptabilis), and consecrated to God (jy:acpévn). The offering of the 
Gentiles will become so by the presence and operation of the Holy Spirit 
(év IIvevpart dyiw).—The text as a whole presents no difficulty, if the exact 
value of each term is established. 


138 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


himself indeed does not offer up the sacrifice, but he is the 
aid and assistant (Ae:rovpyds) of the one and only High 
Priest of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ. The victim to be 
offered (mporgopd) is the Gentiles; and, dying with Jesus 
Christ in baptism, in union with the Victim of Calvary, they, 
too, become victims pleasing to God. Paul prepares them for 
it by making himself the consecrated minister (ipovpyovvra) 
of the Gospel, who, so to speak, leads catechumens to the 
foot of the altar. There remains only to render the victim 
acceptable to God and worthy of being offered to him; and 
this is the role of the Holy Spirit. In brief, it is the Father 
who receives the sacrifice; it is Jesus Christ who, by the 
ministry of Paul, presents it; and it is the Holy Spirit who 
sanctifies and consecrates it. 

A detailed examination of all the trinitarian texts would 
carry us too far. In order to express this constant 
phenomenon of relative opposition and mutual interpenetra- 
tion, and to make it consistent with the strict monotheism, 
which, as all concede, predominates in the writings of St 
Paul, only one exact formula is possible: Trinity in Unity. 


II—Tue FATHER, THE SON, AND THE Hoty Guost 


1. God the Father. 2. The Son of God. 3. The Spirit of the 
Father and the Son. . 


1. The part of the divine paternity in the New Testament 
has been much exaggerated. Jehovah had for his people the 
care and solicitude of a tender father ;! the Israelites, collec- 
tively and as a nation, were the sons of God or the son of 
God ;? even the theocratic king, a type of the Messiah, was 
exceptionally entitled a son.* Nevertheless, the divine 
paternity assumes in the New Testament a greater amplitude 
and prominence. Father is henceforth the proper name for 
God. The Christian’s cry of hope, the aspiration which the 
Holy Spirit continually brings to his lips, in proof of his 
filial adoption, is that appeal of the heart: Abba, Father !* 
As Father, love is the characteristic note of God. If Paul 
did not have the honour of inventing the formula Deus 


? Deut. i, 31; vili, 5; xxxii,6; Isa. Ixiii, 16; lxiv, 8; Jer. iii, 4, 19; xxxi, 9; 
Mal. ii, 10; Ps. cii, 13 ; Wisd. ii, 18; Eccl. xxiii, 1, 4 (Kupie mdrep xai Oee 
Cwis pov). 

2 Ex. iv, 22, 23 (Filius meus primogenttus Israel. Dimitte filium meum) ; 
Deut. xiv, 1, 2 (Fedet estote Domint Det vestri); Os. xi, 1 (Quta puer Israel 
et dilext eum; et ex Aegypto vocavt filium meum) ; Isa. i, 2; Jer. xxxi, 20. 

> Ps. i, 7; 2 Sam. vii, 14; Ps. Ixxxviii, 27. Cf. Heb. i, 4. The angels 
are sons of God, but none of them is the Son of God.—Nevertheless, the 
individual meaning of the expression “son of God” begins to appear in 
Wisdom and Ecclesiastes. Cf. Lagrange, La paternité de Dieu dans 'A.T, 
(Rev. bibligue, 1908, pp. 481-499). 

* Rom. viii, 15 ; Gal. iv, 6, 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 139 


caritas est, he celebrates at every opportunity the love of God 
and the God of love, the Father of mercies, of whom good- 
ness is the dominant trait.! 

God displays his paternity in the three distinct spheres: of 
creation, of grace, and of his inner life. God is a Father, and 
is so by essence; his paternal providence extends to all 
rational beings, whom he loads with blessings ; all that which 
in heaven or on earth forms a family is only a reflection, an 
image, a shadow of his paternity. In the sphere of grace 
God has as many sons as Jesus Christ himself adopts as 
brothers; their number is limitless, and includes potentially 
the whole human race. On the contrary, in the circle of his 
inner life, God has, and can have, only one Son; the produc- 
tion of a consubstantial Son exhausts his fecundity. 

The paternity of God, as Creator, appears only once, and 
in a rather enigmatic text: ‘‘ I bow my knees to the Father 
of whom all paternity (toute famille, warpié) in heaven and 
earth is named.’’? It is almost always considered as a 
function of the sanctifying grace which renders us sons of 
God, and it is then expressed in various terms: Father or 
Abba, Father or God the Father, or God and Father, or God 
our Father, or our God and Father.? 

All these formulas may also, in a different sense, be applied 
to the Father of the Word incarnate. When Paul offers his 
thanksgiving to the ‘‘ God and Father of Jesus Christ,’’* it 
is in vain that some timid interpreters propose to divide the 
sentence thus: ‘‘ God, who is also the Father of the Lord 
Jesus.’’ The Greek article, common to both nouns, is 
opposed to it. Moreover, the expression ‘‘ God of our Lord 


1 1 John iv, 8 (6 @eds dydnn éoriv);—Rom. v, 5; vili, 39 (7 ayarn 
rod Qeod); 18Cor xiii, 11 (6 Geos ris aydans); 2 Cor. i, 3 (6 maTHp Tav 
OLKTLPU@Y). 

* Eph. iii, 14: xduntw 7a yovatd pou mpos Tov matépa, ef ob} maca marpta 
€v ovpavois Kal émt ys dvouagerarz. The words Domini nostri J. C. have no 
equivalent inthe Greek. Paul is addressing God as the author of grace and 
not as the author of nature ; but he uses the occasion to announce the divine 
paternity in all its amplitude.—If it were possible to understand warvpia in 
the sense of marpérns (as Theodoret and the author of the Vulgate do) the 
passage would be quite clear : “ all paternity is a derivation from the paternity 
of God.’? But then we must ask what “‘the paternity in the heavens’’ may be 
Moreover, zarpia does not mean “ paternity,”’ but a “‘ race, or tribe born of 
one father,”’ and by extension “‘ family or nation.’?’ The meaning, therefore, 
is: ‘‘ All that can be called warpia (family in the widest sense) derives its 
name (dvoualerat) from the word zarnp, which is the real name of God.” 
The classes of celestial spirits are compared to families. 

* Father simply (Eph. ii, 18; iii, 14): "ABBa, 6 warp (Rom. vii, 15; 
Gal. iv, 6).—God the Father (1 €or. viii, 6 ; Gal. i, 1 ; Eph. vi, 23 ; Phil. ii, 11 ; 
1 Thess. i, 3; 2 Thess, i, 2; 1 Tim. i, 2; 2 Tim. i, 2; Titus i, 4).—God and 
Father (Eph. iv, 6; v, 20).—God Father (Col. iii, 17).—God our Father 
PROM A ley sel aor ate. 2) Corin?) tphsety 2 tek Diket @2 2 1Col.a1, 32% 
2 Thess. i, 1).—Our God and Father (Gal. i, 4; Phil. iv, 20; 1 Thess. i, 3; 
aii, 11, £2 <2. hessan, 16): 

$ Rom. xv. 0% 2°Corsi 73 5-51..01; 


140 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Jesus Christ,’’! which is found textually in St Paul and 
virtually in St John, has nothing unusual in it. It is only 
necessary to note that Christ’s sonship and our own are 
related merely by analogy. 


2. In the Synoptists it is sometimes difficult to determine 
the precise value of the name ‘‘ Son of God.’’ The testimony 
of Satan is hardly of a nature to enlighten us.” That of the 
centurion is no clearer.* Peter’s confession, as it appears 
from its three different readings, may be only an explicit 
recognition of the messianic dignity.* The voice from heaven, 
heard at the baptism and at the transfiguration, by its two- 
fold allusion to a word from Isaias and the Psalms, seems 
equally to be based upon the Old Testament.*° It is evident 
that, even in the Synoptists, Jesus is not a son like the others, 
but that he is the Son par excellence, and that there is, there- 
fore, a special relation between him and the Father, and we 
have a right to conclude that this relation, unique in its kind, 
is of a superhuman order. Thus Jesus never confounds his 
position in regard to the heavenly Father with that of his 
disciples ; he teaches them to say ‘‘ our Father,’’ but for his 
part he says: ‘‘ My Father and your Father,’’ never ‘‘ our 
Father’’ when speaking of himself and of them together. ® 
He is careful to put himself into a category apart by saying, 
for example, that of the day and hour of the parousia ‘‘ no 
man knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the 


1 Eph. i, 17; 6 @eds rod Kuplov judy I. X. Cf. John xx, 17: Ascendo 
ad Patrem meum et Patrem vestrum, Deum meum et Deum vestrum.° In 
1 Cor. xv, 24, when Christ the victor restores his kingdom “ to God and the 
Father,’’ it is necessary likewise to understand it as “‘ to his God and Father.”’ 

Another example is Col. i, 3: tS @e@ warpi rod Kupiov, provided that it 
ought not to read : 7 @e@ Kal marpi. 

* Satan’s words to Jesus (Matt. iv, 3; Luke iv, 3) ; demoniacs of Gadara 
(Matt. viii, 29 ; Mark v, 7 ; Luke viii, 28). 

* According to Matt. xxvii, 54 and Mark xv, 39, the centurion says: 
“Truly this man was son of God”’ (vids without an article) ; according to 
Luke xxiii, 47: “‘ Indeed this was a just man.’”’ Compare the challenge of 
his tormentors (Matt. xxvii 40) and the question of Pilate (Matt. xxvi, 63 ; 
Luke xxii, 70). Cf. Matt. xi, 3; Luke vii, r9 ; Matt. xiv, 33. 

4 Matt. xvi, 16: ‘f Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’’ These 
last words, “‘ the Son of the living God,”’ are omitted by Mark viii, 29 and by 
Luke ix, 20, as if they were virtually included in the name of “ Christ ”’ or 
“ Messiah.”? They are indeed so included, since the Messiah announced 
by the prophets was to be the Son of God and God. See Knabenbauer’s 
Commentary on these texts. 

5 Baptism (Matt. iii, 17; Mark i, 11; Luke iii, 22); transfiguration 
(Matt. xvii, 5 ; Mark ix, 7; Luke ix, 35). Compare these texts with Ps. ii, 7 
and Isa. xlii, I. . 

6 Compare on the one hand Luke xxii, 29; xxiv, 49; Matt. x, 33; Mark 
viii, 38, and on the other Matt. vi, 32; vil, 11; Luke xi, 13; xii, 32.—Take 
into account the parable of the husbandmen, which shows that there is only 
one Son (Mark xii, 6; Matt. xxi, 37; Luke xx, 13), and the words of the 
archangel to Mary, Luke i, 35 : ‘‘ He shall be called the Son of God.” 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 141 


Father.’’! By his acts and his words he shows that his son- 
ship is transcendent; and the Jews understand him thus 
clearly, since they accuse him of blasphemy in having pro- 
claimed himself the Son of God.? Nevertheless, if we con- 
sidered the Synoptists alone, we might perhaps ask ourselves 
whether the title of Son, given to Christ, refers directly to 
his pre-existent being or to his messianic character, and it is 
a fact that he is not called Son of God by the Synoptists 
themselves, if, as many think, the words viov QOecov in the 
title of the second Gospel are an interpolation.*® 

With St Paul—as with St John and the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews—no doubt is possible. The quality 
of Son refers plainly to his pre-existence : ‘‘ When the fulness 
of the time was come, God sent his Son* . . . God, sending 
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, con- 
demned sin in the flesh.’”’"> He does not constitute him his 
Son by sending him—that is absurd—he sends him because 
he is his Son. He is the Son by antonomasia, or, again, the 
Son of God, his own Son, the Son of his love:® he must 
therefore be the Son in a way entirely different to our 
adoptive sonship, which is imperfect and shared with others ; 
he must be so by a special and incommunicable title; and he 
must be so by nature and by an inalienable right, although 
he can, in an inferior sense and by analogy, give himself 
adopted brethren and join to himself co-heirs, and merit thus 
the name of the ‘‘ First-born among many brethren.’’’ 

If Christ was the Son of God previous to his earthly birth, 
this title is not a purely messianic appellation. It is often 
stated that in the days of the New Testament the appellation 
Son of God was synonymous with Messiah; but no one has 
ever furnished the proof of this assertion. For one who gave 
to the second Psalm a messianic sense the name Son of God 
must truly have been a title of the Messiah; but the question 
here is quite different : it is to know whether the Jewish con- 
temporaries of St Paul, on hearing the Son of God named, 
could and must have understood, without further explana- 
tion, that the promised Messiah was spoken of. In reality, 
all the indications are opposed to this. Origen, who under- 
stood the subject well, laughs at Celsus for having made his 
Jew say that the Son of God would come to Jerusalem : 
‘‘ Never,’’ ‘replies Origen, ‘‘ would a genuine Jew have 


1 Mark xiii, 32. 2 Matt. xxvii, 43. 

3 Mark i, I. * Gal. iv, 4. 

® Rom. viii, 3. This text is explained later on, pp. 163-5. 

® Rom. i, 3, 9; Vv, 10; viii, 29 ; 1 Cor. i, 9; 2 Cor. i, 19; Gal. i, 16; ii, 20; 
iv, 4,6; Eph. iv, 13; 1 Thess. i, 10 fe vids rob @eot). Cf. Heb. iv, 14; 
vi, 6 ; vii, 3 ; x, 29.—1 Cor. xv, 28 (6 Yids by antonomasia). Cf, Heb. i, 2, 8. 
—Rom. viii, 3 (r6v éavroo vidv, his own Son); Rom. viii, 32 (rod idlou viod, 
his own Son).—Col. i, 13 (ro6 viod rijs dydans avro#). 

7 Rom. viii, 29. 


142 THE. THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


spoken so. The real Jews ask us, on the contrary, what we 
mean when they hear us mention the Son of God.’ If it be 
supposed that this title was one of the usual names of the 
Messiah, it ought to be found frequently in Jewish literature ; 
but. there is not a trace of it outside of the Fourth Book of 
Esdras, which is subsequent to our era and has been several 
times interpolated by Christian hands, we do not know 
exactly to what extent.2 The silence of the apocryphal 
writings is confirmed by the language of the sacred authors. 
For them the Messiah is indeed the Son of God, but the 
name ‘‘ Son of God’’ is not the same thing as the rank of 
Messiah. And this is still more true of St Paul, the one who 
of all of them emphasised least the Messiahship of Jesus. 
Paul treats the appellation ‘‘ Christ’? as a proper name, 
without ever stopping to think of its etymological meaning, 
which was of little importance to his readers. The pass- 
word of his orthodoxy, the epitome of his creed, is not: 
‘“ Jesus is the Christ ’’—that is to say, the Messiah; but 
‘* Jesus is the Lord.’’ So, far from establishing an identity 
between the name of Christ and that of Son of God, he 
does not even indicate a connection between these two terms, 
And still more certainly does he not teach what certain 
exegetes too carelessly impute to him, that Jesus acquires all 
at once, at the moment of his resurrection, his universal lord- 
ship, his messianic dignity, and his divine sonship. 


3. The personal character of the Holy Spirit appears only 
gradually in the Bible. It has been asked whether, in the 
beginning of Genesis, the ‘‘ Spirit of God ’’ denotes the blow- 
ing of the wind or a divine activity, and the same question 


? Contra Celsum, i, 49 (XI, 753). 

* That, in the Lzfe of Adam and Eve, 42 (Kautzsch, Die Pseudepigraphen 
des A. T., Tiibingen, 1900, p. 520) the passage referring to Christ, the Son 
of God, has been interpolated by a Christian hand, it is impossible to doubt. 
As to the one solitary text of the Book of Enoch, cv, 2 (tbzd., p. 308), where 
there is question of the Son of God, that has likewise been doctored and 
retouched. Dalman and many others regard the fragment as a Christian 
addition. The only authority, therefore, is 4 Esdras, xili, 32 (¢t tunc revela- 
bitur filius meus), 37 ({pse autem filtus meus arguet, etc.), 52 (Stic non potertt 
guisquam super terram videre filium meum). For 4 Esdras, xiv, 9, see 
‘Kautzsch (zdzd., p. 398) ; the Latin version is quite different. There is still 
4 Esdras, vii, 28 (Revelabttur filius meus Jesus), 29 (Et ertt post annos hos et 
mortetur filius meus Christus) ; but verse 28 is interpolated, as is to be seen 
from the different readings of the other versions: my son the Messiah (Syriac), 
my Messiah (Ethiopian), the Messiah of God (Armenian), the Messiah 
(Arabic). In Psalm. Salom., xvii, 23: (Se, xvpue, nat dvdornoov atrois tov 
Bacitéa adbradv vicov Aavid ... rob Bacrefcar éni "IopaiA maida gov, it 
is Israel that is the son of God. Note that in the Pseudo-Esdras God speaks 
of the Messiah 4zs Son (Ps. ii, 7), without the Messiah being called Son of 
God, which is very different. . 

In these conditions one can only subscribe to the conclusion of Stanton 
(The Jewtsh and the Christian Messtah, Edinburgh, 1886, p. 288): “ It 
{the name Son of God] could not with them be a mere title of Messiahship.”’ 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 143 


has been asked in regard to the spirit that reanimates and 
renews the face of the earth. But the concepts become finer 
in proportion as revelation progresses, and as the Spirit 
of God becomes more and more free from all material alloy. 
No confusion is possible in regard to the inspirer of the 
prophets and the sanctifier of the just.2, In the New Testa- 
ment the Spirit scarcely assumes any form perceptible by the 
senses except by an allusion to the ancient prophecies. Even 
on the day of Pentecost, when he appears in fire and 
tempest, St Luke speaks only of tongues as of fire and of a 
noise as of a hurricane.* Its special emblem will .thence- 
forth be gushing water.* 

St Paul likes to associate him with the immaterial part of 
man and to put it in relative antithesis to the Son and to the 
Father. The Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son; he 
is given by the Father and by the Son; he is the Spirit of the 
Father and the Spirit of the Son.® We rightly infer from this 
the distinct personality of the Holy Spirit and his simul- 
taneous procession from the Son and the Father. Although 
he never receives the name of God, he has the attributes of 
God. Grace, the divine work par excellence, is derived from 
the Holy Spirit, as well as from the Father and the Son. The 
operation of the Spirit is also that of Christ and of the 
Father.® The faithful are called, equally, temples of the 
Holy Ghost and temples of God.? The Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit are inseparably united in the bestowal of 
baptism, and they dwell conjointly in the souls of the just.® 
No one is acceptable to God unless he is influenced by the 
Spirit of God,® and the greatest misfortune that could befall 
a Christian would be to grieve the Spirit,’® without whom he 
is incapable of receiving any spiritual good. Do these texts, 
taken by themselves alone, prove incontrovertibly that the 
Holy Spirit is God, and that he is a personal being, not a 
divine attribute personified?*' In any case, they should not 


1 Gen. i, 2; Ps. ciii, 30. 
2 1 Sam. x} to; xi, 6 ; xix, 20, 23, etc —Os. ix, 7 (M191) UR, avevpatoddpos, 
vir spirttus)—Isa. xi,. 1-3: mn? min is again here in the feminine, like 


its material symbol, which proves that the personification is not complete. 

* Acts i, 2, 3. 

« John vii, 38, 39 ; Acts ii, 17, 18 (quoted from Joel ii, 28). 

5 Spirit of God (Rom. vill, 9, 11; I Cor..il, 11, etc.), Spirit of Christ (Rom. 
viii, 9 ; 2 Cor. ili, 17, etc.). Given or sent by God G Thess. iv, 8 ; 1 Cor. ii, 12 ; 
2 Cor. 1, 22 5.V, 5). 

© 1 Cor. xii, 11 ; Eph. iv, 11 ; cf. 1 Cor. xii, 6, 28. 

7 Temples of God (1 Cor. lii, 16) ; of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. vi, 19). 

#Litsi03l,,4 (Oe Cor. vi, ni. 


® Rom. viii, ay 10 Eph. iv, 32 
1 Lebreton, Les ortgines de la Trinité4, Paris, 1919, p 405 : “‘ In consequence 
of the point of view chosen by the Apostle, the action of the Spirit appears 


much more clearly than his person; the distinct personality of the Son is 
manifested very plainly in his mortal and glorious life, and, even in his pre- 


144 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


be taken by themselves or separated from the other trini- 
tarian passages; for, when taken together, they acquire a 
convincing force vastly superior to that which they possess 
when considered apart; and their value increases still more 
when they are connected with the uniform teaching of the 
apostles and find a place again in the great current of 
Catholic tradition. 

Not that it is necessary to undervalue isolated texts. - No 
mind, St Paul tells us, can conceive the happiness which God 
prepares for those who love him: 

But to us God hath revealed it by the Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth 
all things, even the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the 
things of a man, but theispirit of a man that isin him? So the things 
also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Now we 
have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, 
that we may know the things that are given us from God." 

Three truths issue from this text. The Spirit of God only 
is capable of revealing the mysteries of God, because he only 
searches the depths of God: he does not belong, therefore, to 
the category of created things; possessing omniscience, an 
essentially divine attribute, he must himself be God. The 
Spirit of God is to God what the spirit of man is to man; the 
Spirit of God is, therefore, in God and is something divine. 





existence, it has been more than once described .by St Paul, especially when 
he was incited to it by nascent heresies. On the contrary, the personality 
of the Holy Spirit remains in shadow ; he has not appeared to us in an incarna- 
tion, and the mysteries of his procession and eternal life are as yet only 
indirectly illumined by the reflections of his action here below.” 

11 Cor. ii, 10: ‘Hpiv yap (or 8€) dmexdduper 6 Beds Sta rod 
IIvedparos: 76 yap IIvedpa mavra €pavvg, cai ra Badn trod Beod. 

11. Tis yap oldev avOpumwy ra Tot avOpwrov et j41) TO mvEtpa TOO avOpuérrov 
3 €v atT® ; otrws Kalra Tot Geod ovdeis Eyer cf yw) TO Tvetpa tod 

€ouv. 

12. ‘Hyeis 5é od ro mvetpa Tod Kéopou €AdBopsev GAda ro IIveipa to éx 
Tot @eod. ° 

A. Meaning of jyets.—Here us (jpets) does not designate all Christians, 
but only the preachers of the Gospel, those who can say with Paul : Sapzentiam 
loguimur inter perfectos (verse 6). It is to them that the Spirit has revealed 
the mysteries of God, that they might transmit them to the faithful: Ouge e¢ 
re ae non in doctis humanae sapientiae verbis sed in doctrina Spiritus 
verse 13). : 

B. Meaning of the word mvedua.—The Spirit of God (verse 11) and also 
Spirtt (verse 10) is certainly the Holy Spirit. The spzrzt of man which is in 
man (verse 11) can be only the intellect ; it is, therefore, a mere synonym 
of vots. The spirit of the world which we have not received is, according 
to some exegetes, the devil; but, apart from the fact that this thought, 
‘‘ We have not received the devil,’”’ is a very strange expression, the whole 
beginning of the Epistle shows that it is a question here of the wisdom, 
the mentality of the world; and this is also the opinion of most of the 
commentators. The spirtt that comes from God could be, strictly interpreted, 
by virtue of the parallelism, supernatural mentality, wisdom inspired by 
God. But, if we reflect how easily the Apostle passes from the effects of 
the Holy Spirit to the Holy Spirit himself, and if we compare what he says 
a little further on (verses 13 and 14): t” doctrina Spiritus, quae sunt Spiritus 
Lez, we shall not hesitate to believe that he is speaking here again of the 
person of the Holy Spirit. 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 145 


Finally, the Spirit of God is also the Spirit which comes from 
God (73 é« Ocov), proceeds from God, and is sent by him. 
Another no less suggestive passage is the following : 


You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of 
God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is 
none of his. ‘And if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead, because 
of sin, but the spirit liveth, because of justice. And if the Spirit of him 
that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Jesus 
Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies by his Spirit, 
[or because of his Spirit that dwelleth] in you. 


The Holy Spirit is here presented as a personal being who 
dwells in us, influences us by his action, and bears witness to 
our spirit. He is in us as-a principle of supernatural life, of 
sanctification, and of filial adoption, effects which are pro- 
duced in us only by a divine influence. Moreover, the Spirit 
of the Father is the Spirit of the Son: he cannot dwell within 
us without the Son dwelling there also, and his absence 
involves that of the Son; which presupposes an indissoluble 
union between them. 

These relations between the Spirit and the Son have, how- 
ever, a limit, since all the attributes of the Son are not 
adapted to the Holy Spirit. The latter is never called the 


1 Rom. viii, 9: ‘Ypets 5¢ ov« dare & aapxi adda &v mveduari, eimep 
IIveipa @eod oixet ev tpiv i 8é 1s Hvetpa Xptarod ovw exe, 
odros ovK EoTw avTod. 

10. EL8¢ Xprords ey spiv, rd pev cpa vexpov Sia duapriay, ro 5é mvefpa 
Let) 81a. Sexaroodyny. 

11. Ei 88 76 [Ivejpa rod éyeipavros rév “Inaody &x vexpav otxei 
& tpiv, 6 éyeipas éx vexpav Xpraordv “Inootv Cwomorjoe kat ta Ovnra 
odpara tuav Sa rob évorxodvros abrod [Ivevparos (or dia 1d evotxodv abrod 
TIveipa) ev viv. 

A. Meaning of mvedya.—(a) It is agreed that the Spirit of God and the 
Spirit of Christ (verse 9) as well as the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the 
dead (verse 11) denote the Holy Spirit —(4) In the phrase: vos autem in carne 
non estis sed in spiritu, it is better to understand by “ the spirit” the super- 
natural principle which animates a man in a state of grace; first on account 
of the antithesis 7 carme (nature dominated by sin), then on account of the 
explanation sz tamen Spiritus Det habitat in volts, the Holy Spirit being the 
living source of our spzrtt.—(c) In spiritus vero vivit propter justificationem, 
the sense will be the same by virtue of the contrast between the body and the 
spirit, and because it is not the Holy Spirit but our spirit (our supernaturalized 
being) that justification quickens. 

B. Two effects of the indwelling of Christ or the Spirtt within us.— 
(a) Henceforth, if the body is dead (by anticipation) on account of the original 
sin which caused death to come upon all the posterity of Adam, the spirit is 
life (full of vitality) on account of the justice which comes to us from Christ. 
Some give the explanation: “ The body is dead (mystically and morally), 
namely in regard to sin (81a TH dpapriav), to which it is no more subjected.”’ 
But this exegesis is not a very natural one and does not take into account the 
adversative particle dAd.—(5) One day the body, the tabernacle of the Holy 
Spirit, will be raised from the dead on account of the presence of the Spirit 
(Sua. 76 évouxodv) or by the action of the Spirit present in us (ca r06 évotxoivros). 
The two readings are almost equally well attested and each gives an 
excellent interpretation. 


II. *~ 


146 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Son of God and never takes the predicates of the historical | 
Christ ; on the other hand, he is the Spirit of the Son, -and is 
sent by the Son; in a word, he seems still more distinct from 
the Son than he is from the Father. The heterodox exegetes 
who confound the Spirit of God with the Son of God rely on 
the supposed identity of the two expressions ‘‘ in Christ ’”’ 
and ‘‘in the Spirit,’’ and on two texts of St Paul skilfully 
handled. We shall examine these expressions later on, and 
shall prove that their identity has to do only with the work 
relating to the sanctification of souls.!' As for the two texts : 
‘“ The second Adam became a quickening spirit,’’? and ‘‘ the 
Lord is the spirit,’’? we shall see that they have nothing to 
do with the Holy Spirit. 


ITI—ExXTERNAL RELATIONS 
1. Christ.is First in All Things. 2. The Rock of Israel. 


1. We have seen that Christ possesses the primacy in 
everything, both in the natural and the supernatural order: 
in omnibus ipse primatum tenens. This absolute primacy, 
which implies a pre-eminence of rank and a priority of exist- 
ence, is the term which best expresses his relations with the 
exterior world. He is ‘‘ the firstborn of every creature,’’ not 
by virtue of a moral superiority, which would make of him 
the first and most eminent of creatures, for all created beings 
without exception, in heaven and on earth, owe their exist- 
ence to him; but by virtue of a relation of temporal priority, 
and because he was born before the creation of the world, a 
fact which the Apostle explains by substituting for this title 
an equivalent which is free from any ambiguity:: ‘‘ He is 
before all things.’’ | 

The absolute primacy of the Son is expressed by this other 
formula: ‘‘ All things are in him, all things are by him, all 
things are for him.’’ Ali things are in him because, being 
the perfect image of God, he comprises the ideal and the 
model of all things possible, and is thus the exemplary cause 
of all contingent beings. All things are by him, as the 
efficient cause, God, in his outward operations, acting by the 
Son in the Holy Spirit in accordance with the order and 
harmony of his inmost life. All things are for him by a 
double right, both because the creation is his work and 
because God, embracing at a glance the whole multitude of 
his counsels, connected with his Son, in advance and by a 
special hond of finality, the world of nature and the world of 
grace. For these two relations of Christ as God and as man, 
as the author of nature and as the author of grace, are hardly 


» See, later on, *‘ The Life of the Church.” 
* 1 Cor. xv, 45. See pp. 172-3. * 2 Cor. iii, 17. See Note T. 


RELATIONS OF PRE-EXISTENT CHRIST 147 


ever separated. But, whether he be considered as God or as 
man, his transcendent dignity comes originally from his 
primacy.? 


2. It is, however, in the work of redemption that the 
Apostle is principally interested. Christ began that work 
before his human birth; for ‘‘the Rock from which the 
Israelites drank and which followed them in the desert, was 
Christ ’’ himself: Petra autem erat Christus.2. F or one who 
bears in mind that Jehovah was the Rock of Israel, that he 
accompanied his people across the desert, that the pre- 
existent Christ is even here identified with Jehovah, the text 
which we have just quoted has in it nothing obscure. 
*‘ Christ was the Rock,’’ not the Rock of Horeb, struck by 
the staff of Moses, for that rock did not follow the Hebrews 


* Col. i, 18: iva yérnrat ev ma&ow adres mpwrevwv. It is a primacy in 
every form, according to his divine and human nature, in the natural as 
well as in the supernatural order. We perceive in the description of Christ, 
under these two aspects, an exact and sustained parallelism which is no doubt 
intentional. 


In regard to creation. In regard to the Church 
A. mpwrétoxos mdans xricews mpwrdroKos éx TOY vexpav 
B. €v abr@ éxriodn ra mavra ev & éxopev ry droddrpwow 
7a ndvra év ait® ouvéornnev 
C. ra mévra &e’ abrod Exriorat, 8c’ atvroo dmoxaradAdfa 
3’ ob ra. wdvra (1 Cor. viii, 6) 
D. ta mdvra . . . eis atrov Exrioras «= ra. rea ets atréy. 


The formula A concerns Christ the Jirstborn, Col. i, 1§ (creation) ; 
Col. i, 18 (the Church).—The formula B, Christ she exemplary or formal 
cause, Col. i, 16, 17 (creation) ; Eph. i, 7 (Church).—The formula C, Christ 
the effictent cause, Col. i, 16; 1 Cor. viii, 6 (creation); Col.i, 20 Church). 
—The formula D, Christ the final cause, Col. i, 16 (creation); Col. i, 20 
(redemption). 

We must not, moreover, imagine that these expressions are peculiar to 
Paul, except perhaps in what concerns the final cause. The other three have 
their exact parallel in the Gospel of St John and in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

* 1 Cor. x, 4: émwov ydp éx mveuparixns axodovbovans mérpas:  mérpa Se 
hv 6 Xpiarés.—This phrase is connected with the preceding one, for which 
it gives the reason. It explains (the Vulgate translates autem, but the text 
reads ydp) why the Hebrews in the desert had spirttual food and drink—that 
is to say, miraculous and, as the context clearly implies, typical—for they did 
not quench their thirst at a material rock, like the rock o Horeb, but at the 
sptritual Rock which accompanied them everywhere. And “the Rock ”’ which 
I mean, adds Paul, was Christ.—This language would be incomprehensible 
if we did not remember that the Rock (334) designated Jehovah. No Jew 
could be ignorant of this, the use of the term was so common. They said 
not only “ the Rock of Israel ”’ (2 Sam. xxiii, 3 ; Isa. xxx, 29), or “‘ my Rock, 
our Rock,” or “ the Rock of my hope, the Rock of our salvation,” etc., but 
also simply “‘ Rock ” (2 Sam. xxii, 32; Ps. xvii, 32; Isa. xliv, 8), and with 
the article “ the Rock ”? (Deut. xxxii, 4).—The meaning is, therefore, clear ; 
“‘ It was not a material rock which satisfied their thirst, it was the spiritual 
Rock, Jehovah, always present in the midst of them. Now Jehovah was the 
pre-existent Christ.” For anyone familiar with the teaching of St John, 
St Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, this assertion contains nothing new 


148 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


in their march, but the veritable Rock which served them 
as a refuge and a citadel, the spiritual Rock of which Moses 
had spoken to them. 

The pre-existent Christ is the Rock, because he is one with 
Jehovah. If this identification between Christ and Jehovah 
awakened some doubt, the Apostle would remove it by add- 
ing: ‘‘ Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted 
and perished by the serpents.” The Israelites had tempted 
Jehovah ; but Jehovah, the Rock of Israel, was Christ. Thus 
the Son of God anticipating, so to speak, the incarnation and 
anticipating the role of Saviour, was in the midst of the 
Hebrews, served them as a guide and provided for their 
wants. It was he who rained down upon them the manna, a 
nourishment doubly spiritual, both because it was the result 
of a miracle and because it prefigured the eucharistic bread ; 
he it was, the angel of Jehovah and Jehovah himself, the 
mystical Rock, who quenched their thirst by a spiritual 
drink, so called by a twofold significance, as proceeding from 
a miracle, and as the type of the chalice of benediction. We 
are happy to say that the best interpreters of all schools 
return to this explanation, at once so simple and so natural, 
and recognize that the former incorrect and protestant 
translation: ‘‘ The rock signified Christ,’’ was inspired by 
biassed motives. Still less must we think here of the childish 
and ridiculous fables of the rabbis of the later period, whose 
imagination deliriously dreamed of a magical stone rolling on 
through mountains and valleys in the wake of the Hebrews, 
to furnish them with drinking water. Christ is the true 
Rock, as he is the true Vine ; but while the latter title belongs 
to the incarnate (Word, the former applies to the pre-existent 
Christ. 


CHAPTER III 
JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 


I—Tue Human Nature or CHRIST 
1. Christ truly Man, but God-Man. 2. Mystery of this Union. 


I. OTHING equals the emphasis with which St 
Paul affirms that Christ, whose pre-existence he 
has just taught, is also truly man, like unto all 
other men, except as regards sin. This is 
because Jesus Christ can be a perfect mediator 

only on condition that he shares our nature: ‘‘ There is one 

God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ 

Jesus.’’* He is the conqueror of sin and death only by virtue 

of the solidarity, which makes his cause ours: ‘‘ For by a man 

came death, and by a man [must also come] the resurrection 
of the dead.’’? These explicit statements leave no doubt as to 
the real meaning of certain expressions which, by themselves, 
might seem ambiguous. When St Paul says that ‘‘ the second 
man is from heaven,’’* he alludes to his eternal origin; he 
contrasts him, from this point of view, with the first Adam 
formed out of dust and incapable of transmitting to his de- 
scendants any life other than the physical one. When he 
affirms that he who was “‘in the form of God’’ took ‘‘ the 
form of a servant ’’* and appeared ‘‘ in the likeness of men,”’ 

far from denying the truth of his human nature, he adds im- 

mediately that Christ was ‘‘ found as a man ”’ through the ex- 

perience of his entire life, since he was capable of obedience 
and was subject to death. Finally, when he speaks of the 
sending of the Son of God “‘ in the likeness of sinful flesh,’’ he 
evidently means to exclude the sinful flesh and not the flesh 
itself, for the sending was expressly meant ‘‘ to condemn sin 
in the flesh.’’> And what perverse exegesis has ever been 
able to discover the slightest trace of Docetism in the follow- 
ing passage: ‘‘ If we have known Christ according to the 
flesh, now we know him so no longer’’?® It is one thing not 
to recognize the reality of the flesh of Christ, and quite 
another no longer to know Christ according to the flesh— 
that is, according to the low, earthly, carnal ideas of Paul’s 
adversaries. 

In order to fulfil his mission Christ must be truly man; 


‘ty Tim. ii, 5. See pp. 167-8. * 1 Cor. xv, 21 ; ¢f. Rom. v, 17. 
* 1 Cor. xv, 47. See pp. 173-4. * Phil. ii, 6. See Vol. I, pp. 312-6. 
* Rom. vili, 3. See pp. 163-5. * 2 Cor. v, 16. See pp. 24-25, 


149 


150 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


for, in the present order of things, he must be ‘‘ the second 
Adam, the firstborn of the dead, the firstborn among many 
brethren,’’ and the ideal ‘‘ High Priest;’’* now, if he were 
not truly man, he would be neither the new Adam, nor raised 
from the dead, nor high priest, and he would not have the 
saints for brethren. In the present order of providence, in 
which man falls and is raised again by the principle of 
solidarity, it was necessary that the Son of God should 
assume our nature and not a higher nature, and that he 
should be man and Son of man in order to be wholly devoted 
to our interests and capable of serving them. He had to 
borrow his flesh from the sinful mass in order to put into ita 
leaven of sanctification, and to assume the semblance of 
sinful flesh in order to condemn sin in the flesh. 

Also he was ‘‘ manifested in the flesh’’ ;? and the flesh 
means for the Apostle the soul united to the body, the 
human composite. He showed that he was man by his 
whole earthly life and his long intercourse with men, and 
notably by his weakness, his sufferings, his death, and his 
resurrection : Habitu inventus ut homo.? 

He is descended from the patriarchs;* he is a child of 
Abraham ;° he is the son of David according to the flesh ;® he 
was born, or more exactly ‘‘ made,’’ of a woman’—that is to 
say, formed of the substance and blood of a woman, without 
the agency of man and contrary to the laws of natural genera- 
tion ; but this privilege, due to his transcendental dignity and 
to the necessity of breaking all connection with sin, which he 
came to destroy, does not prevent him from being also as 
really man as the first Adam, who came directly from the 
hands of his Creator.® 

Being God and man at the same time, Jesus Christ must 
receive all the attributes which belong to God and man. 
This communicatio idiomatum is nowhere more remarkable 
than in St Paul. Christ’s pre-existence, his historical exist- 
ence, and his glorified existence are quite often united in the 
same phrase, and referred to the same subject without any 
care for what we should call the chronological order : 


* Rom. v, 14; 1 Cor. xv, 22-45 (New Adam); Col. i, 18; Rom. viii, 29 
(firstborn) ; Heb. ii, 17 ; iv, 14; v, 1-10 (high priest), etc. 

Mg Sly hivpabhiaw ley serine 5) “ Rom. ix, 5. 

Seal sii, 10: * Rom. i, 3: * Galliveat 

8 (a) Jesus Christ man. Rom. v, 15 (€v xdpitt 7H TOD évds dvOpamou 
"I. X.); 1 Cor. xv, 21 (80 avOpdmov dvdotacts vexpav); xv, 47 (6 Sevrepos 
avOpwmos e€ odpovod) ; Phil. ii, 8 (xjpare evdpebets cis avOpwros) ; 1 Tim. ii, 5. 

(4) Son of a woman, of David, of Abraham, of the Patriarchs : Gal. iv, 4 
(yevopevov ex yuvatkds) ; Rom. i, 3 (rod yevouevov ex onépparos AavelS xara 
odpxa); Gal. iii, 16 (r@ oméppart abrod [’ABpadu]; Rom. ix, 5 (€€ dv 
Feige 2 6 Xpiords TO Kara adpxa); 2 Tim. ii, 8 (J. X. . . . é« omépparos 

avetd). . 

(c) The flesh or phystcal body of Christ, Col. i, 22 (€v 7 aware tHs capKds 
avrod) ; Eph. ii, 14; Rom. viii, 3. 


JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 151 


a) Subsisting in the form of God... (pre-existence) 
b) He took the form of a servant. . . (earthly existence) 
Therefore God has exalted him! (glorious existence). 


) 

) By him all things were made... 

) He is the head of the body, the Church, 

c) He who is before all, the firstborn from the dead.? 


b) He made himself poor for us. 
a) He who was rich, 
c) that he might by his poverty make us rich.? 


a) On the subject of his Son, 

b) descended from the race of David according to the 
flesh, 

(c) established Son of God by the resurrection from the 

dead.4 


(b) In him dwells bodily 
(a) All the fulness of the Godhead 
(c) And you are filled in him. 


Since certain attributes do not belong to the human nature 
and others are incompatible with the divine nature, two 
natures must necessarily have existed in Jesus Christ; and 
it is equally necessary that there should have been in him 
but one person, since the possessor of the attributes remains 
the same. 


2. How is the mystery of this union accomplished? Paul 
does not explain it. He lays the foundations of the doctrine ; 
it is for theologians to draw the consequences. His two 
formulas of the incarnation are, on that account, none the 
less worthy of interest. ‘‘ In him dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily.’’® The exegetes recognize that the 


£> Phil 11, 6,.7, 9. = Colsivio. 15, ® 22, Cor, Vil s0: 

SRO nis 4s.4 © Coleil, 0,110: 

* Col. li,.9: "Ev atr® xarotxet wav ro mAfpwua ris Oedrntos owparixas. 
In tpso inhabitat omnis plenttudo divinttatis corporalstter. 

(a) All the fulness of the Godhead.—The word Oeérns is found only here, 
and its kindred term @eidrns only in Rom. i, 20 and Wisd. xviii, 9. Trench, 
Synonyms of the N. T., §ii, states the difference clearly: Geudrns is the 
character of that which is dzvine, Bedrns is the character of that which is God. 
Among profane writers only three examples of Oedrns are known (Lucian, 
Icarom.,9; Plutarch, De def. orac., 10 and De std. et Ostr., 22), while Betdrns 
is common ; but it can be said that they observe the distinction marked by 
etymology and thoroughly appreciated by the Greek Fathers. Augustine 
himself (De c#vit. Dez, vii, 1) noticed the difference of meaning: “ Hanc 
divinitatem, vel ut dixerim deitatem, nam et hoc verbo uti jam nostros non 
piget, ut de Graeco expressius transferantid ee tlli Bedrnra appellant...” 
German translators also, who pride themselves on their exactitude, employ 
different words: Gotthezt for Oedrns, and Géttlichkezt (de Wette) or Gottesgtite 
(Weizsacker) for decérns.—This being granted, the meaning of “all the fulness 
of divinity ’’ cannot be doubtful. The best exegetes are agreed on this 
point: Won modo divinae virtutes, sed tpsa divina natura (Gottheit und 


152 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


fulness of the Godhead can be only the entirety of the divine 
essence, and consequently divinity itself. In fact Oedrns 
(deitas) abstracted from Oeds is not identical with @edrns 
(divinitas) abstracted from Oetos. The latter word might be 
understood as referring to quality, the former must refer to 
nature. This meaning would apply still more forcibly in the 
case where Paul combats the error of the Colossians, which 
consisted in locating in the superior powers particles and 
emanations of divinity ; but, in the main, it is independent of 
this hypothesis. What does ‘‘ bodily’? mean? Many of the 


Gottlichkeit zs¢ sweterles. Jenes deutet die gittliche Natur an: dieses den 
Glanz, Ehre, Wirde, Aufzug, welche aus der gittlichen Natur hervorstrahit 
tund derselben von rechtswegen gebtihrt), Bengel, Gnomon N.T.8, Stuttgart, 
1892, p. 800.—Haupt (in Meyers Kommentar®, 1902) paraphrases very well : 
die Fille, d.h. der Gesamtinhalt, die Summe, alles dessen, was Gott zu Gott 
macht—Abbott (Zph. and Cel., Edinburgh, 1897) is more concise : “ of the 
Godhead, that is, of the divine nature.’ The paraphrase of Lightfoot 
(Co/., p. 179: “ the totality of the divine powers and attributes ’’) and of Stevens 
(Zhe Paul. Theol.2, p. 202: ‘‘ the plenitude of divine attributes ”’) is much 
less happy, but the latter author corrects himself a little further on (p. 214) 
by translating ‘‘the plenitude of Deity,’’ and the former completes his 
definition immediately by adding : ‘‘ of the Godhead.” 

(6) Dwelleth in him bodily. The word xaroixeiv designates a permanent 
and fixed abode (Hebrew 359); it is distinguished thus from zapotxeiv 
(433, Levegrinart), with which it is often contrasted ; Philo says that whoever 
lingers in the encyclical sciences (preliminary sciences, such as geometry, 
astronomy, etc.) passes through philosophy but does not reszde in it (Sacraf. 
Abel et Catn, 10, Mangey, vol. i, p. 170: wapoixet codia ov Karotxet). 
Since the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, the expression is very just.— 
The words é€v avr@ refer to Christ who has just been mentioned by name 
(ii, 8: ob xara Xpiorov), and consequently refer to the incarnate Word, not 
to the Word before the incarnation, as certain exegetes carelessly suppose.— 
The precise meaning of owpartxds is not without difficulty. Since the Jody 
is once (Col. ii, 17) contrasted with shadow, like reality with the figure, some, 
following St Augustine (Z#7st., cxlix), explain it by the word “ really’; 
but the body has this meaning only by virtue of an explicit antithesis with the 
type or figure. Several Fathers think that ewyarixds is equivalent to odoiwddas, 
“ substantially ’”’ (Isid. of Pelusium, Zzst., iv, 166). The Godhead dwells 
in the humanity of Christ not accidentally (ob oxerix@s, St Cyril of Alex.), nor 
partially as in the saints (neguaguam per partes, St Jerome, Jn Jsaiam, xi, 1; 
cf. St Hilarius, De Trintt., viii, 54), but wholly and by a substantial union. 
All this is irreproachable theology and can be deduced from xarowxety, 
but “body ’’ does not signify ‘‘ substance.’”? Others have recourse to a 
metaphorical sense of the word “‘ body.’’ The fulness of the Godhead dwells 
in him, “in the body of the Church,” or “as in a body ’’—that is, forming a 
kind of organism (Haupt).—It is useless to seek so far for explanations, when 
the obvious meaning is satisfactory at every point. ‘“ The fulness of the 
Godhead dwelleth in him bodily ’’—that is, incarnate. St John Chrysostom 
observes that the Apostle does not say : ‘‘ The fulness of the Godhead dwelleth 
in a body” (€v owpart), because a body cannot contain it; but “in him” 
(€v av7@), in his person, and this “‘ united toa body.’’ We have here a formula 
of the incarnation comparable to John i, 14: awuatix@s expresses by one word 
the Verbum care factum est of St John. The best exegetes understand it 
thus : “ owpartxds—namely, assuming a bodily form, becoming incarnate’? 


(Lightfoot).—“ Not dowudrws, as in the Adyos before the Incarnation ’”’ 
(Abbott). 


JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 153 


Fathers translate it by ‘ really ’’ or ‘‘ substantially ’’; but 
the word ‘‘ body ’’ has this meaning only when it is con- 
trasted with shadow. Corporeally signifies ‘‘in a body, in 
the form of a body ’’; this meaning is in every way suitable, 
and there is no occasion for seeking any other. Your 
pretended philosophy, said Paul, is only a vain deceit; you 
still linger in elementary, childish doctrines ; you ask for the 
protectors and mediators of a chimerical world of the 
imagination, and you neglect him in whom, in a visible 
and tangible form, free from error and illusion, ‘‘ dwelleth 
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.’’ As he possesses this 
absolute plenitude (ray 13 tAypwpa) permanently (xarocKe’), 
he will cause it to flow out upon you in spiritual graces, and 
you can therefore dispense with all other intercessors. 

This text teaches, indeed, the fact of the union of divinity 
and humanity in the one person of Christ, but does not 
inform us how the union is made. Another passage lifts a 
little the veil of this mystery: ‘“ Being in the form of God, 
he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied 
himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the like- 
ness of men.’’! Without reverting to the previous detailed 
exegesis of this text, we consider the following points to 
have been established: the form of God is the divine nature, 
the form of the servant is human nature. The ‘ emptying 
of himself’’ takes place by reason of the fact that Christ 
superadds to the divine nature, which he had from all 
eternity, the human nature which he assumes in time. 
There are, therefore, in one and the same subject, in one and 
the same person—namely, in Christ, two natures, the divine 
and the human.—Since the divine nature is immutable, and 
since it is elsewhere asserted that Christ retains it (vrdpxwv), 
the self-renouncement cannot consist in the abandonment or 
the diminution of that nature. If this self-renouncement 
signifies anything else than abasement and complete humilia- 
tion, resulting from the assumption by the Word of an 
inferior nature, it can be only the voluntary abandonment of 
the divine honours to which Christ had a right as man 
(75 éwar toa Oc), and might have claimed by virtue of the 
hypostatic union. His human nature is not absorbed in this 
union, for Christ remains truly man and is recognized as 
man by his outward appearance (cxjpart), which is not 
deceptive, and by the entire course of a life of obedience, 
humiliations and sufferings. 


* Phil. ii,[6-7. See Vol. I, pp. 312-16, and Note I, Pp. 456-65, 


154 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


II—Tue HistToricaL FIGURE OF JESUS 
1. What Paul tells us of Jesus. 2. What he could tell us of him. 


1. When Renan was accompanying with his little bells the 
deafening orchestra of German criticism at that time so 
much in vogue, he wrote: ‘‘ Paul can say what he will; he is 
inferior to the other apostles. He has not seen Jesus; he has 
not heard him speak. The divine logia, the parables, are 
scarcely known to him. The Christ, who gives him personal 
revelations, is his own phantom; it is himself that he hears, 
while thinking that he is hearing Jesus.’’* Thirty years 
later Renan, with his plastic, versatile genius, would have 
doubtless agreed with the then more progressive criticism, 
and would perhaps have subscribed to the following judicious 
reflections of Sabatier: ‘‘ According to the school of 
Tibingen, Paul either knew the life and historical teach- 
ing of Jesus very imperfectly, or disdained that tradition as 
being a knowledge of Jesus according to the flesh, which 
made his Gospel dependent on that of the first apostles. 
But neither of these theories is better founded than the 
other. . . . We cannot see how the traditional knowledge 
of the acts, sufferings, and teachings of Jesus could have 
harmed the independence of his apostolate and the originality 
of his Gospel.’’? 

The fact is that the positions have greatly changed since 
that time. To-day it is generally admitted that Paul was 
acquainted with the life and teaching of the Master, that he 
was inspired by his spirit, and that he faithfully reflected his 
mind. The allusions to the earthly life of Jesus are as 
numerous in Paul’s Epistles as in the other apostolic 
writings, outside of the Gospels, whose object was precisely 
to narrate it. Proportionally there are even fewer allusions 
to the facts of the Gospels in the Apocalypse, in the Catholic 
Epistles, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in the Acts of 
the Apostles than in the letters of the Doctor of the Gentiles. 
Let us judge of this by the following brief sketch. 

Before coming to this earth, Christ pre-existed in the form 
of God ;3 he was rich with all the riches of heaven.* At the 
end of the providential preparations for the event and at the 
time indicated by the divine decrees, he, the Son of God, is 
sent by his Father to accomplish the work of salvation.® 
Jesus is the descendant of Abraham,® the son of David,’ the 
glory of the Hebrew people.* He is born of a woman under 


1 Renan, Saint Paul, Paris, 1869, p. 563. 

2 A. Sabatier, ZL’ Apéstre Paul®, 1896, p. 61. 

3 Phil. ii, 6. 4 2 Cor. viii, 9. 
5 Gal. iv, 4; Rom. viii, 3 ; ili, 25, 26; v, 7. ® Gal. iii, 16. 

7 Rom. i, 3 ; xv, 12; 2 Time ii, 8. * Roms, a) 


JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 156 


the régime of the Law;! he lives in the midst of Jews,? and 
Jerusalem is the centre of his Church.? He is truly man, in 
all respects like ourselves, yet without sin.> He has 
brethren according to the flesh,® one of whom, James, is 
designated by name.’ In order that they should collaborate 
with him and continue his work, he surrounds himself with 
apostles,* to the number of twelve;® three among them, 
Peter, James, and John, are expressly mentioned ;!° but 
Cephas-Peter occupies the highest rank among them.!! In 
confiding to the apostles the care of preaching his doctrine, 
he gives them the right to live by the Gospel!? and the power 
to work miracles.1% After having led on earth a life of 
poverty, ** subjection,!> obedience,!® and holiness,!7 he volun- 
tarily gives himself up to his enemies,}® the Jews, who put 
him to death.?°® 

The institution of the Eucharist is related by Paul with 
more precision of detail than in the Gospel. Paul mentions 
especially the treason of that tragic night, which recalls the 
sinister nox erat of St John. If the passion is described on 
broad lines, we know that, in speaking to catechumens, the 
Apostle made a striking picture of it.2° He tells us often of 
the cross,*! the blood,?? and even of the nails.23 The execu- 
tioners of Jesus are the Jews?* and the princes of this 
world.*° The passion took place towards Easter, at the time 
of the azymoi,?® under Pontius Pilate.27_ The burial is not 
forgotten,”* because it gives to baptism its figurative value.2° 
But Paul lays more stress on the resurrection on the third 
day and on the different manifestations of the risen Christ.?° 
Jesus Christ has ascended into heaven,?! is seated on the 
right hand of the Father,3? and will return to judge the living 
and the dead.** These are articles of the Credo, the form of 
which is largely borrowed from the Apostle to the Gentiles. 

Such is an epitome of Paul’s picture of Jesus. It is more 
than a sketch; it is a lifelike portrait drawn with firm lines, 
which the evangelists complete without altering its expression. 

This is not all. After deeds, words; after the Master’s 
physiognomy, the substance of his teaching. 


+ Gals iv, 4. * Rom. xv, 8. 

> Gal. i, 17 ; Rom. xv, 19-27. 

peOIeys 15.5 1, COLA XY, 2122", 01 1 lin, iis 

See ore vy 21; CON Axs 5: ” Gal. i, 19; ii, 209. 
Sat, Cor, ix, 5,234: Sea Coreaxvas. MiGal, Ika S A193 10,'O, 
RCOrnix, 5) er Cormx Ls 

8 2 Cor. xii, 19. Cf. Rom. xv, 19. pee COlavill.0: 
PePhil 6S. 16 Rom. v, 19. akomel oc: 
Pitcairn t As: it, 20. ioe re Lhess.ai; 15, eee sal sil. 1; 

P71 Cor.il, 2, ete. 23 Rom. lil, 25, etc. 

AKG} Me tie oe tele UnessileTs. fill D0} Mie aly ACh 5 REE 
26 1 Cor. v, 6-8. tei. 1m. V1.2, $9571, Cor. xv, 4. 

7° Rom. vi, 4: Col. ii, 12. SrleObaxkv 4-7: 
8! Eph. iv, 8-10. §* Eph, i, 20 ; 11, 6, 


#® 1 Thess. i, 10; Phil, iii, 20. 


156 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Paul has saved from oblivion the saying of Jesus: ‘‘ It is 
more blessed to give than to receive.’’ He reproduces the 
words of the Last Supper more completely than the evangelists 
themselves, except, perhaps, Luke.? In speaking of marriage, 
he refers to the teaching of Christ, as it is found in St 
Matthew and St Mark, and distinguishes it expressly from 
his own precepts.* When he proclaims the right which the 
preacher of the Gospel has to live by the Gospel, we are 
irresistibly reminded of the measures taken by Jesus on 
behalf of the heralds of the faith,* and this impression is 
changed into certainty on reading St Paul’s verbal quotation 
from St Luke: Dignus est operarius mercede sua.5 When 
he relies on a word of the Lord in order to instruct the faith- 
ful on the subject of the parousia, the most natural sense is 
certainly to take the ‘‘ word of the Lord, not for an inward 
voice, but for a word really pronounced by Jesus in the 
course of his earthly life.’’® 

The Apostle only thinks of making laws in his own name 
when he cannot invoke a command of the Lord.’ Every- 
where else he appeals to the law of Christ, which, he takes 
it for granted, is known by his neophytes,® a law which is 
binding upon him, as well as on simple believers.® The 
moral law, which he teaches to the catechumens, is not 
derived from him, but from Jesus ;?° to fail to conform to it 
would be to disobey Jesus ;!! and the duty of the faithful is to 
learn Christ, as that of the apostles is to teach Christ to 
them. ?? | 

Finally, in order to verify the results of this rapid review, 
we ought to take some terms of comparison; for example, 
the Sermon on the Mount or the great eschatological 
Discourse.1* Here the numerous similitudes, both in 
substance and in form, are instantly obvious, and can be 
traced back evidently to the same source—namely, the teach- 
ing of Jesus. The fact is so clear that no sensible critic 
will dispute it. 


2. Thus, whether we collect the allusions to the earthly 
life of Jesus scattered through the writings of Paul or com- 
pare his moral teaching with that of Jesus or examine the 
similarities of expression too numerous to be accidental, we 
cannot say either that the Apostle is ignorant of the contents 
of the Gospel history, or that he disdains them. This study 


1 Acts xx, 35. * 1: Cor. xi, 24-26. 

3 x Cor. vil, 10-12. * 1 Cor. ix, 14. 

8 1 Tim. v, 18; Lukex,7. Cf. Matt. x, 10 (ctbo suo). 

* 1 Thess. iv, 15. 7 1 Cor. vii, 25. © Gal. vi, 2. 

* 1 Cosaix, at. 10 1 Thess. iv, 1-2. "1 Tim, vi, 3,, etc. 


18 Eph. iv, 20, 21; Col. ii, 6, 7. 
* For the eschatology, see Vol. I, pp. 73-4, 79. 


- 


JESUS CHRIST AS MAN 157 


has been made by others, and we have not to remake it here.* 
We shall limit ourselves to formulating the following con- 
clusions. 

The allusions to the life and teachings of Jesus, whether 
open or concealed, are much more numerous in St Paul than 
a superficial examination would lead us to suppose; in pro- 
portion, there are more of them than in the rest of the New 
Testament, apart from the Gospel. 

These allusions sometimes touch upon minute details and 
imply consequently a larger and more general acquaintance 
with the facts which are merely incidentally mentioned. 

The manner in which they are made testifies to the exist- 
ence, in both the author and in his readers, of a common 
stock of instructions and memories, which it is sufficient to 
call up to be understood by all. 

Finally, the picture that results from them is a faithful 
portrait, and he who drew it can be justly proud of having 
** the spirit of the Lord.’’ 

But we must not be weary of repeating that Paul’s task is 
not to write the biography of Jesus, which he includes among 
the elements of faith of which no neophyte can be ignorant ; 
that he returns only by accident to this elementary teaching ; 
that instead of laying emphasis upon it he contents himself 
most frequently with merely alluding to it ; and that he knows 
infinitely more than he can write about it. If it had not been 
for the disorders of the agapae and the doubts of the 
Corinthians on the subject of the resurrection, should we ever 
suspect that, in regard to the circumstances of the institution 
of the Eucharist and the appearance of the risen Jesus, 
he possessed so many accurate and precise details, which the 
evangelists have omitted to tell us? 


1 It is sufficient to refer to P. Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, Leipzig, 
11902; Knowling, Zhe Testimony of St Paul to Christ, London, 1905 ; 
Dausch, Jesus und Paulus, Minster, 1911 (collection Brblische Fragen) ; 
Olaf Moe, Paulus und die evangelische Geschichte, Leipzig, 1912 ; Dausch 
is Catholic, the others are conservative Protestants. For objections, Goguel, 
L’ Apdbtre Paul et Jésus-Christ, Paris, 1904. 









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BOOK IV 
THE WORK OF REDEMPTION 


159 


Om 
ure, 





CHAPTER | 
THE REDEEMING MISSION 


I—Tue AMBASSADOR OF GOD 


1. Object of the Redeeming Mission. 2. The Mediator of the New Covenant. 
3. No other Mediator but He. 


I. E have already said that the initiative of our 
salvation originates always with the heavenly 
Father. It is to him that St Paul loves to 
ascribe all the redeeming plans, the execution 
of which is confided to the Son, the natural 
mediator between God and men: 


When the fulness of the time was come, 

God sent his Son, 

made of a woman, made under the Law, 

that he might redeem them who were under the Law, 
that we might receive the adoption of sons.4 


This short phrase expresses the fact, the time, the manner, 
and the object of the redeeming mission.—The fact. God 
the Father sends his only Son, sufficiently distinguished from 
all those who are to share in the name of sons by his very 


1 Gal. iv, 4,5. Other details in Sieffert and Cornely. 


A. (4) dre Se FrBev 10 mAjpwua to = At ubt ventt plenttudo temporis, 
dvou, 


B. éfanéaretAey 6 Beds tov Yiov mistt Deus Filium suum 
avrot, 

C. yevdpevov ex yuvaxds, yer. td = factum ex muliere, factum sub lege, 
vopov, 

D. (5) tva rods bird vopor eLayopdon ut cos, gut sub lege erant, redimeret, 
iva iv viobeclav drroAdBwpev. ut adoptionem filiorum reciperemus. 


The four principal circumstances of the sending are found stated in the 
four sections of this phrase. 

A. The time.—The adversative particle 5€ refers to what has just been 
said: guanto tempore heres parvulus est (iv, I) .. . cum essemus parvult 
(iv, 3). Consequently, the fulness of the time corresponds to the t#me 
appointed by the Father (axpt tis mpobeopias tod marpos, lv, 2); this is 
what St Paul expresses elsewhere by aispensatio plenitudints temporum 
(Eph. i, 10) or by fines saeculorum (1 Cor. x, 11; cf. Heb. ix, 26); but 
it is also, independently of the divine decree, the termination of that period 
of childhood which made humanity incapable of seconding God’s redeeming 

lan. 
4 B. The fact—In the compound verb éfaméorewev, the two component 
prepositions can retain their proper value : eé “from the bosom of God 
(John viii, 44: éy@ €x tod Geod ef7APov), dad “ from heaven”’ (John vi, 38: 
xatapéBnKxa dad Tod odpavod), a meaning which agrees perfectly with the 
only other case where St Paul employs this compound verb (Gal. iv, 6.) 
The paraphrase of Bengel : ex caelo a sese, would therefore gain, if reversed. 


Il. 161 II 


162 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


isolation and by the incommunicable relation which unites 
him to the Father; he sends him from himself and from the 
highest place in heaven, as indicated by the forceful com- 
pound word (égarécreAXev) employed by the Apostle, he 
sends him at a precise moment of time, but he does not con- 
stitute him his Son by the act of sending him, for this 
mission clearly presupposes the real pre-existence of the 
Son.—The time. It is the fulness of the times, an expression 
which refers at the same time to the expiration of the delays 
freely appointed by the Father, and to the end of the 
providential preparations which were to make the world 


ex sese a caelo, Let us remember, however, that in late Greek, especially 
in St Luke (four times in the Gospel and seven times in the Acts), the 
compound éfazooréAAew often has the meaning of the simple oreANew. 

C. The manner.—The Son of God is the subject of a twofold becoming: 
he becomes the son of a woman and a subject of the Law.—(a) The expression 
yevopevov éx yuvatxds recalls yerduevos éx oméppatos Aaveid Kata odpxa 
(Rom. i, 3). The reading yevvdpevov, which is that of the present Vulgate 
(natum ex muliere), and which Bede defends so vigorously (/” Luc., xi, 27, 
XCII, 480: guia Christus conceptus ex utero virginali carnem non de nthilo, 
non aliunde, sed materna traxit ex carne), is not defensible from a critical 
point of view. Moreover, it would not give a satisfactory sense, for Christ 
was born formerly, but is no longer dorm now ; it would therefore need the 
perfect or the aorist, as Photius remarks (AmpAzl. gu., 228, CI, 1024).—The 
expression yerduevov ex yuvatkds is not opposed to the virginal conception 
of Jesus, but does not prove it either, as Tertullian and others think (De carne 
Christi, 20: Factum potius dicit quam natum ; simplictus enim enunttasset 
natum ; factum autem dicendo et Verbum caro factum est consignavit et 
carnis veritatem ex Virgine factae asseveravit) and Pelagius (Jn eo guod 
dicit ex muliere, monstrat non more solito ex conventu virt et feminae, sed 
per Spiritum S. ex matre tantum Christum incarnationem hominis suscepisse). 
—(b) The expression yevdpevov to vopov signifies that Christ was born subject 
to the Law, in so far as he was born a member of the Hebrew people, also 
subject to the Law; and this Law he observes from his birth, in regard to the 
cirumcision, the presentation in the Temple, the yearly pilgrimage, etc. But 
he does not observe it as regards the arbitrary interpretations of it by the 
Pharisees, or in opposition to the moral law ; and he shows that he is superior 
to the Law. 

D. The object.—It is twofold : to redeem those who were under the Law 
(that is, to deliver them from the yoke of the Law) and to confer on all the 
adoption of sons. These two partial ends correspond inversely to the two 
aspects of the manner of the sending. 


(a) Made of a woman. (4) To redeem those subject to the 
3 aw, 
(4) Made under the law. (z) To confer on all filial adoption. 


The two ends are subordinated to one another, for it was necessary first to 
deliver the Jews and to free them from their burdensome privileges, in order 
to be able to extend to all, equally, the prerogative of sonship. 

The Latin Fathers sometimes notice the iterative sense of redimere and 
recipere. Thus St Jerome in his commentary says: Redempti dicuntur 
gui primum de Dez parte fuerint et postea esse cessaverint ; and St Augustine : 
Von dixtt accipiamus sed reciplamus, ut significaret hoc nos amtsisse in 
Adamo. But the Greek égfayopalew does not indicate this idea of return ; 
and in droAayuBavew, the component preposition dé marks rather the fulfil- 
ment of the promise by which the filial adoption is given, as several Greek 
Fathers observe. 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 163 


ready for this great event. Subsequently, it would have been 
too late; previously it would have been too soon; the termina- 
tion of the messianic prophecies was to coincide with the 
maturity of the human race.—The manner is synthetized in 
that brief formula ‘‘ made of a woman, made under the 
Law.’’ It was indeed fitting that the Son should partake of 
the nature of those whom he came to redeem, by being born 
of a woman, like all other men, in order that he might have 
the right to call them his brethren and make them share in 
his quality of Son; it was fitting also that he should be 
subject to the Law, that he might deliver his compatriots 
from its yoke; a seemliness which becomes a necessity in the 
actual plan of redemption, in which God had resolved to 
save men through the principle of solidarity.—The twofold 
object of the mission corresponds to the twofold condition of 
the divine envoy : it was to deliver the Jews from the tyranny 
of the Law in order to bring them under the Gospel; and to 
confer upon all men, Jews and Gentiles without exception, 
the adoption of sons. 

Another text as famous for its intrinsic difficulty as for the 
confused interpretations of it by the exegetes is quite 
similar to the preceding one, yet differs from it in one point : 
the principal idea, expressed by the personal verb, is no 
longer the Son’s mission, but the condemnation of sin in the 
flesh resulting from this mission : 


For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, 

God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, 

Condemned sin in the flesh, that the justification of the Law might 
be fulfilled in us.} 


? Rom. viii, 3-4. Cf. Cornely and Lagrange; Sanday, B. Weiss, and Zahn. 


N) ) 297 au? " ° “ys . 
A. (3) 70 yap addvvarov ToD vouou Nam quod impossibile erat legt, 
ev @ nabever dia TiS CapKés, tn quo infirmabatur per carnem, 
B. 6 @eds tov Eavtod Yiov réupbas Deus Filium suum mtttens 
C. & dpotwmpare capKos auaptias tn stmtlitudinem carnis peccati 
Kal mept dpaprias et de peccato, 
D. xaréxpwe 77)v dpaptiay ev TH damnauit peccatum in carne, 
capi, 
E. (4) Wa oO Stxalwua tod vopyou ut justificatio lepis impleretur tn 
mAnpwOA ev nutv tots py KaTa oapxa mobis, gut non secundum carnem 
mepirratovow aAAa KaTa mvedua. ambulamus, sed secundum spirttum. 


This text, like the preceding one, may be regarded as bearing on the redeem- 
ing mission, and we may consider: A the motive ; B the fact ; C the manner 
and immediate object ; D the result ; E the remote object of this mission. 

A. The motive.—It is the recognized powerlessness of the Law to struggle 
against sin, and still more to conquer it.—T7'o advvarov tod véuov can be 
active and signify ‘‘ the impotence of the Law,”’ or rather, “‘ that in which the 
Law was impotent ”’; or it can be passive and signify “ that which was im- 
possible to the Law.’’—The second meaning is simpler and more comformable 
to usage ; above all, it fits in better with the addition €v @ jobéver Sid THs 
gapxés. This last part of the phrase is also susceptible of a double meaning : 
‘‘inasmuch as, in that,” or “ because.”’ In the first case the writer explains 


164 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


All doubtful points aside, it appears evident from this 
complex phrase that one of God’s motives in sending his Son 
was to remedy the thenceforth recognized impotence of the 
Mosaic Law. The Law revealed to man the path of justice, 
and was intended to lead him thither ; but it had been fettered 
and paralysed by the flesh—that is to say, by the inclination 
to evil which at present vitiates human nature. In order to 
vanquish and destroy sin in its own domain, God sends his 
Son ‘‘in the likeness of sinful flesh.’’ Paul does not say 
‘fin the likeness of the flesh’’; for he would thus let us 





in what the impotence or impossibility of the Law consisted ; in the second, 
the reason for it is given: but the general signification remains about the 
same.—As to the construction, the most competent philologists agree to-day 
in regarding the clause ro advvarov rod vouou ev @ hobéver 51a THS capKds 
as a nominative, or better as an accusative absolute put in apposition with 
the following phrase : ‘‘ God condemned sin in the flesh, that the justification 
of the Law might be fulfilled in us, whch was tmpossible to the Law, because 
it was weak (and rendered powerless) by the flesh.’”’ There are some examples 
of this accusative in the best classics: Plato, Theaet. 153C; Sophocles, 
Oedipus Tyrannus, 603; compare 2 Cor. vi, 13: THY 8€ avi avrynodiar, 
mAaTuvOnre Kat vets. Cf. Sanday, Romans§, p. 191. 

B. The fact.——The mission is indicated here by the verb zéuzew, a less 
expressive synonym of éfamoaré\Aetw. The emphasis is on tov é€avtod Yidv, 
his own Son, the only being fitted to fill well the mission which God 
wished to entrust to him.—‘‘ The relation of the aorist participle wéyyas with 
the verb xaréxpwe is neither that of priority nor that of simultaneousness ; 
it is here not a relation of time, but of manner: en fazsant l’acte d’envoyer 
(Godet).’’ We see by this that the mission presupposes the pre-existence 
of the Son, as the best commentators agree. 

C. The manner and the tmmedtate object—In the Vulgate this clause 
presents two noteworthy differences: (a) The accusative 2m stmilitudinem 
carnis designates the incarnation itself as the object of the mission, while 
ev duotwparet lets us extend the mission to the entire life-—(6) The punctuation 
et de peccato damnavtt peccatum appears to have been suggested by John xvi, 8 
(arguet mundum de peccato) ; but not to mention the difficulty of explaining 
the expression damnare peccatum de peccato, the conjunction («ai, e¢) cannot 
begin the principal phrase, for there is no other personal verb; it announces, 
therefore, a circumstantial complement, co-ordinated with zz simzlitudine 
carnts peccatt.—In the Septuagint, Ps. xxxix, 7; cf. Heb. x, 6-18, wept 
duaprias (Qucia. being understood) takes sometimes the meaning of “ sacri- 
fice for sin.’’ But, as nothing here suggests the idea of sacrifice, and as the 
elliptical expression would be hard to understand, it is better to adhere to the 
natural sense, which is perfectly suitable : for siz, t.e. to break the dominion 
of sin, as will be seen. 

D. The result——What does ‘‘ to condemn sin in the flesh’? mean? Sin 
can here be only the power of evil, the consequence of the first fault, which 
invaded all Adam’s posterity and has its special seat in the flesh. It is the 
sin described in chapter v, while in the preceding clause it was a question of 
sin in general (epi duaprias). To condemn sin is not only to declare it bad ; 
all the commentators are agreed on that, as is shown by their paraphrases : 
évixnoevy (Chrysostom), xaréAvoev (Theodoret), zuterfecit (Grotius), virtute 
privavit (Bengel), destruxtt or debtlitavtt (S Thomas), devote to ruin (Godet). 
Reflection shows that the condemnation of sin is determined by the context 
in two ways :—(a) “To condemn sin in the flesh ’” was precisely what the 
Law could not do: it could indeed declare sin bad!and unjust, but it could 
neither curb it nor dislodge it.—(4) The effect of this condemnation is to 
permit us to fulfil the precepts of the Law (7d dixatwua=what the Law 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 165 


understand either that Christ did not have real flesh, or that 
his flesh was of a nature different from ours. Nor does he 
say ‘‘in a flesh of sin,’’ which could let us suppose that 
Christ had assumed sinful flesh. He says, with rare felicity 
of expression, ‘‘ in the likeness of sinful flesh’’ ; for the flesh 
of Christ is indeed real flesh, which nothing distinguishes 
from our own physically, but it is only in appearance a flesh 
of sin, since it is neither the heritage, nor the seat, nor the 
focus, nor the instrument of sin. 

As he had for his mission the condemnation of sin in the 


declared just). It is not, therefore, a simple sentence of condemnation, 
and Weiss (Meyers Kommentar®) gives the meanin§& well : ‘‘ He condemned 
it to lose its power and to be vanquished by Christ.”’ 

But where, when, and how is this condemnation of sin effected ? 

(z) Most interpreters suppose that €v rf oapxi means in the flesh of Jesus, 
and moreover that the condemnation took place at the death of Christ. This 
being affirmed, Baur and his usual disciples (Holsten," Pfleiderer, Schmidt, 
etc.) think that God, by killing the flesh of Christ on the cross, has killed sin 
itself. This explanation encounters two impossibilities ; it implies the exis- 
tence of sinin the flesh of Jesus, which is absolutely contrary to 2 Cor. v, 21 ; 
and it imputes to St Paul the absurdity of saying that the death of the sinner 
kills sin in him and in others. 

(6) Several refer to 2 Cor. v, 21 and Rom. vi, 6-11: “‘ By the death on the 
cross, a death endured in his human nature, he breaks for ever all contact 
with sin, which could touch him only by that nature. Thenceforth sin has 
no more claim upon him, and no more claim on the believer, since the believer 
is dead with Christ’? (Sanday).—Riickert, Olshausen, Philippi, Hofmann 
and others have much the same opinion. According to this theory, Christ 
condemned sin to impotence, while according to St Paul it is God who 
condemns it. Moreover, Christ by his death escaped from sin; but sin 
could not touch him (2 Cor. v, 21), and it is not plain, therefore, how death 
has withdrawn him from it. 

(c) Others, dissatisfied with this exegesis, connect the condemnation of 
sin with the whole mission of Christ. In carne guam Christus puram 
assumpsit, puram per totam vitam servavit, puram in cruce Patri obtultt, 
Deus peccatum damnavit, atque tlla ipsa in re, in qua et per quam peccatum 
regnum tenuerat virtutemque suam exseruerat, tllud devictt prostravstque 
(Cornely). Bisping has a similar explanation. This interpretation shows 
clearly how Jesus Christ vanquished sin in his own flesh, but does not 
explain how he vanquished it in the flesh in general. Now this is precisely 
what the Apostle means to express, as the following sentence proves: uf 
justificatio legis impleretur in nobis. This last phrase is the key to the 
mystery. : 

E. The remote end.—The Law required justice from man without being 
able to give it; the Son of God gives the justice demanded by the Law (ro 
Stxaiwya tod vopov==what the oe declares just and imposes as such ; 
justificatio legis renders the idea imperfectly). This justice will be fulfilled 
in us, thanks to the means of salvation brought by the Son of God (ev 7piv, 
not v¢’ *ydav, “ by us’’); on condition, however, that we do not “ walk 
according to the flesh,” and do not obey the instincts of concupiscence, but 
that we “walk according to the spirit’? and obey the impulses of grace : 
a condition which the Apostle supposes realized in all Christians (rots pm 
Kara odpka mepimarovoww, equivalent to guippe gut non ambulamus secundum 
carnem).—We see that, if the thought of the Apostle turns upon the word 
flesh, it converges towards this central idea, of giving the Christian what the 
Law had not been able to give him. 


166 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


flesh, Jesus Christ could, of necessity, have nothing in 
common with sin. God sends him expressly ‘‘ on account of 
sin’’ (epi dpaptias)—namely, to expiate and atone for sin; 
not only original sin (it is not wept rns adpaprias), but sin in 
general, whatever may be its nature and source. The best 
exegetes of all schools have seen very clearly that here is no 
question of a simple condemnation by comparison, like that 
which might occur to a sinful man from the sight of the sin- 
less flesh of Christ, nor of a platonic sentence which would 
leave things as they were before. They give to the word 
‘““condemn,’’ the strongest equivalents: ‘‘ to conquer, to 
strike down, to destroy, to abolish, to annul, to expel, to kill, 
to exterminate,’’ and they are no doubt right, for God’s 
condemnation being efficacious, cannot fail to produce its 
effect; but the idea of effective condemnation, with which St 
Paul contents himself, is sufficiently clear, and it is better to 
stop there. God condemns to impotence the sin which was 
reigning in the flesh; and he condemns it in the flesh itself, 
since the flesh of Christ is ours. By having tried to find in 
this text what Paul never put there, the majority of com- 
mentators have closed their minds to its truth. They have 
completed it arbitrarily, each to suit himself, either by under- 
standing the words ‘‘ for sin’’ as meaning ‘‘ sacrifice for 
sin,’’ or by supposing that the condemnation of sin takes 
place in the flesh of Christ only, as if there were any sin 
“in his flesh’’; or by forgetting that the condemnation of 
sin is here the work of the Father who commands the *Son 
to execute it. 


2. This mission constitutes Jesus Christ the ambassador of 
God and representative of men; in other words, a Mediator. 
In the Jewish religion there were three kinds of mediators: 
kings, priests, and prophets. The prophet brings to men the 
messages of God; the priest administers the things of God in 
the name of men; the theocratic king was the lieutenant of 
God. Priests and prophets are equally mediators between 
God and man; only, on the mysterious ladder which unites 
heaven with earth, the priest ascends and the prophet 
descends ; the prophet, a messenger from God, descends to- 
wards men; the priest, a delegate of men, ascends towards 
God. No doubt, when their mission is completed, their 
movements are reversed; the prophet then returns towards 
God to render an account of his message ; the priest descends 
again towards his constituents to distribute among them the 
blessings of heaven; but it is their first direction which 
characterizes them. As for the theocratic king, his throne 
is ‘the throne of Jehovah”? itself.1_ David, clad with the 
ephod, blesses the people in the name of God ;? and in the 


1 Ps. xliv, 7; cf. Heb. i, 8. 2 2 Sam. vi, 18. 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 167 


messianic psalms the king, a descendant of David, presents 
himself as the accredited intermediary between God and the 
people. 

Did the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus Christ suspect the 
triple mediation of the Messiah as king, prophet, and high 
priest? Had they any idea of any other priest than the 
levitical hierophant, and did they generally recognize the 
Messiah in the ‘“‘ priest for ever according to the order of 
Melchisedech?’’ Was the prophet whom they expected the 
Messiah himself, or a forerunner of the Messiah? These are 
thorny questions, confused by controversies, and obscured by 
vagueness or by the uncertainty arising from contradictory 
data. The writers of the New Testament certainly show us 
in Jesus Christ spiritual royalty, the fulness of the prophetic 
spirit, and the eternal priesthood, but without ever grouping 
these three attributes together; they seem rather to divide 
them up among themselves, the Synoptists giving more 
prominence to the office of the messianic king, St John to 
the authority of the prophet par. excellence, and the Epistle 
to the Hebrews to the dignity of the high priest, who is the 
first to open the way to heaven. Paul, indeed, calls Christ 
neither priest, nor king, nor prophet; and although he 
assigns to him royal, sacerdotal, and prophetic functions, 
this threefold division of the offices of Christ was foreign to 
the messianic speculations of the Jews,! almost unknown by 
the Fathers, introduced or put into use, after very curious, 
wavering attempts, by the reformers of the sixteenth 
century, and is not at all in harmony with Pauline theology. 

The Apostle gives the name of mediator only once to Jesus 
Christ. ‘‘ For there is one God; and one mediator of God 
and men, the man-Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemp- 
tion for all.’’2 To extend to all the blessing of the divine 


1 The Zestaments of the Patriarchs indeed group together the attributes 
of high priest and king (S1meon, 7: avaorioe: yap Kuptos éx rot Aevei ws 
dpyepéa Kal €x tod “Iovda ws Baoidda, Gecv Kai avOpwrov); but is not 
this clearly a Christian interpolation ? 

2 1 Tim. ii, 5: Els yap Oeds, els cat pecirns Oeod Kai dvOpirwy, dvOpwros 
Xptoros *Inoots.—The particle yap gives the reason for what has just 
been said, namely that God desires the salvation of all men. The reason 
is in part twofold : the one God, necessarily the same for a// men, the beginning 
and supreme end of all, the one mediator who has offered himself as a sacrifice 
for a/] men.—The word els is put first, for it is the pivot of the whole argu- 
ment. So it must not be translated : “‘ One God exists,’’ or ‘‘ There is one 
God,” or “‘ God is one,” but “‘ Unique is God,”’ or if one prefers, ‘‘ One 
only (being) is God,’’ regarding «fs as the subject, @eds and peoirns as 
the predicate; hence the absence of the definite article before peoirns.— 
The addition dvOpwmos Xpioros "Inoots explains the title of mediator, a 
natural intermediary between the two extremes: as man, he proceeds from 
men; as Christ, he proceeds from God. Jesus Christ is mediator ratione 
personae and ratione munerts, as the following verse indicates. He is mediator 
equally ratione status (in so far as he is at once comprehensor and vtator } 
ef. Augustine, De civit. Dez, ix, 15), but this is not what the Apostle says here. 


168 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


will for man’s salvation by rendering God propitious through 
the voluntary sacrifice of life, which he offers as the repre- 
sentative of the human race: such is the end, the means, and 
the condition of his all-powerful mediation. The special 
office of mediator being to serve as a bond of union between 
two parties, in order to reconcile them if they are in conflict, 
and to strengthen the bonds between them, if they are at 
peace, the God-Man was eminently fitted to fill this role; 
since, by his two natures, he identifies himself with the two 
extremes, and since, by his theandric nature, he associates 
them in an indissoluble union. Jesus Christ was, therefore, a 
mediator, not only by reason of his intermediary position 
between the way and the end, between the trial and the 
crown, nor by reason of his person, the harmonious union of 
humanity and divinity, but, above all, as a dispenser of the 
divine blessings of which he is the unique depositary. 

For the Christ of St Paul is not simply a natural mediator, 
like the Logos of Philo; he is a mediator of supernatural life. 
By him, in fact, we have grace! and salvation, begun here 
below, consummated in heaven;? by him, justice and the 
fruit of justice ;> by him, justification,‘ redemption,® and re- 
conciliation ;* by him, peace” and general pacification ;* by 
him, free access to God® and a sure refuge against the divine 
wrath ;'° by him, spiritual consolation?! and a confidence 
which nothing can disturb ;'? by him, the gift of the Holy 
Spirit’® and the adoption of sons ;'* by him, the victory over 





——On the argument itself, Cornelius 4 Lapide remarks : Apostolus hic probat 
td quod dixit, Deum scilicet velle omnes homines fieri hoc argumento: Unus 
est omntum hominum, tam fidelium quam infidelium Deus, td est creator, 
provisor et pater, gui summe bonus omnes homines quast filtos suos amat ac 
salvos esse cupit: ideogue dedtt Christum medtatorem ut scilicet unus et 
tdem Christus omnium omnino hominum esset redemptor, utque per Christum 
omnes homines jungeret ac salvaret. The first pgrt of the text is well ex- 
pounded, the second less well. There are indeed two proofs of the will 
universal to salvation : the oneness of God and the oneness of the redeemer. 
It is perfectly true that the mission of the redeemer comes from the divine 
initiative, but this is not St Paul’s point of view here,who makes both 
arguments converge to ‘the same end, without subordinating one of them to 
the other. The emphasis of the discourse is, therefore, laid upon the words 
gut dedit semetipsum redemptionem pro omnibus, from which comes the 
oneness of the mediator. Consequently St Paul has in view chiefly redeeming 
mediation and not ontological mediation—that is to say, the union of the two 
natures, divine and human, in the one person of Christ. On 1 Tim. ii, 2-4, 
see pp. 77-9. 

1 Rom. i, 5; v, 21. * 1 Thess. v, 9; 2 Tim. iii, 15. 

* Rom. iii, 27 ; Phil. i, rr. “ Rom. v, 18; Gal. ii, 16, 

® Rom. iii, 24 ; Eph. i, 7. 

* Rom. v, 10-11 ; 2 Cor. v 18 Eph. ii, 16; Col. i, 20-22. 


7 Rom. vy, I. $Colsasi20: 
* Rom. v, 2 ; Eph. ii, 18. 10 Rom. V, 9. 
ia Corsies) 4 -20Corhitiaa: 


ae 
eo 


Titus iii, 6. MeEph =i. 5: 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 169 


all our enemies ;! by him, the endless reign in heaven.? It 
is by him alone that we are able to glory in God,* and that 
we must address our thanksgivings to him;* for, as all the 
divine promises have had in him their Yea—that is to say, 
their fulfilment, by him also the faithful pronounce their 
Amen, in an act of sincere and grateful faith, in order to 
ascribe all honour and glory to God.* Ina word, in the order 
of grace still more than in the order of nature ‘‘ all things 
are by (or for) him and we by him,’’® since he is the principle 
of our life and of our whole being. 


3. Thenceforth there is no other mediator above or beside 
him. By a badly understood cult of angels, connected in 
their thought with the observance of the Mosaic Law, the 
Colossians detracted from the universal mediation of Christ. 
‘‘ They had been told that the Law had been given by angels, 
because they had lent their ministry to its promulgation, and 
because they would not look with indifference upon any con- 
tempt of the Torah,’’’ of which they were the guardians. 
Anyone who violated it, therefore, was exposed to the wrath 
and vengeance of the heavenly spirits. The Apostle assures 
them that there is nothing in this: 


Despoiling [of their past functions] the principalities and powers, God 
hath made an open show of them in the eyes [of all, thus despoiled and 
deprived of their honours], /eading them in triumph [in the train of Christ 
the conqueror, enthroned] om [or dy] the Cross.® 


St Paul knows only two kinds of supernatural beings, the 
good and the bad, the spirits of light and the spirits of dark- 


1 Rom. viii, 37 ; 1 Cor. xv, 57. * Rom. vy, 17. 

? Rom. vy, II. £-Rom..1.-5.; Vil, 25 . XV, 275 

® 2 Cor. i, 20. 

® 1 Cor. viii, 6; 80’ od (variant : 51’ év) ra ravra Kal jets i’ adrod. 

7 Theodore of Mopsuestia (edit. Swete), vol. i, p. 294. Theodoret on 
Col. ii, 15 has a similar explanation. 

® Col. ii, 15: "Amwexdvoduevos tas dpyas xal ras efovoias éderyparicev év 
mappnoia OpiapBevoas advrovs ev alt@. LExpolians principatus et potestates 
traduxtt confidenter, palam triumphans tllos in semetipso. 

There are few texts of Scripture about which the Greek and Latin 
commentators, ancient and modern, are in more thorough disagreement. 
Not only is the meaning of all the words without exception disputed, but 
there does not exist any foundation of agreement either as a whole, or in 
detail. See Le triomphe du Christ sur les principautts et les putssances in 
Recherches de science relig., vol. ili, 1912, pp. 201-229, where we attempt to 
prove : (a) that God and not Christ is really the subject of the phrase, a point 
generally admitted to-day ; (4) that dmexdSvodpevos is transitive and has for 
its object ras dpxds; (c) that tds dpyas xal ras éfovetas denotes the angels 
and not demons or earthly powers; (d) that éSeypdricey dv mappnoig 
means: “‘ He exposed publicly to the gaze of all” the angels thus deprived 
of their past prerogatives, so that no one could be deceived in them; (¢) that 
@ptapPevoas means “ leading them in triumph”? in the suite of Christ the 
conqueror—a meaning which OprapBevew has in Greek and triumphare 
in Latin ; (f) that €v avr@ refers to the cross (sravpés) which has just been 
named : ot the cross, or dy the cross. 


170 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


ness, the angels of God and the angels of Satan. Nowhere 
is there discoverable in him the conception of intermediate 
beings, destined, perhaps, to become angels or demons, but 
who are at present neither demons nor angels. For the 
Jewish contemporaries of St Paul and for St Paul himself, 
the angels connected with the promulgation of the Law were 
good angels, and he never had any idea that they had over- 
stepped the mandate given them, or had turned against God 
the authority with which they were invested. Nor did the 
Colossians, who paid them honour, have a different idea of 
them, and the Apostle would not have been understood if he 
had advocated another hypothesis. Nothing, therefore, 
suggests to us that the angels have transgressed; never- 
theless, when the Law had* been abolished, their role was 
ended and their mediation was useless. Jesus Christ, exalted 
infinitely above the super-terrestrial powers, alone capable 
of revealing to us the Father, of whom he is the perfect 
image, and the only appointed intermediary between God and 
men, is thenceforth a substitute for the heavenly spirits, 
promulgators and guardians of a law which, instead of 
favouring the redeeming plan, has rather been an obstacle to 
it. So, when the Law is put aside, they share in a certain 
way its disgrace, and their ministry has no more reason for 
existing. ) 

God makes them serve as an escort to the triumphant 
- Christ. In itself this would be an honour; but it is also a 
loss, for it marks the end of their autonomy, and is a proof 
that they are only the subordinates and satellites of the great 
mediator. 

Why, then, is St Paul, in speaking of Christ, so chary of 
the name of mediator? Is it perhaps because, in the opinion 
and common parlance of the Jews of that time, Moses was 
the mediator par excellence?! But the author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, who is not ignorant of this, nevertheless 
calls Jesus Christ the mediator of the new covenant.? The 
reason is to be sought elsewhere. A mediator, in the usual 
sense of the word, is a stranger to both the parties whom he 
brings into harmony. It is otherwise with Christ, in whom 
dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily, yet who has really 
entered into the human family. He is a mediator, but not an 
ordinary mediator ; he is the new Adam. This is a title which 
St Paul creates expressly for him and which, while contain- 
ing pre-eminently the role of mediator, renders it henceforth 
unnecessary. 


1 Gal. iii, 19 (& xetpi peotrov). See pp. 96-7. 
* Heb. viii, 6 (xpeirrovds dare SiaPjans pecirns) ; cf. ix, 15 ; xii, 24. 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 171 


II—Tue New ApaAm 


1. Parallel between the Two Adams. 2. Role and Quality of the 
Second Adam. 


1. The most complete, fruitful, and original figure of the 
redeeming mission of Christ which the Apostle draws for us 
is that of the new Adam. It is exceedingly doubtful whether 
is was suggested to him by contemporary Jewish theology, for 
the appellation ‘‘ second’’ or ‘‘ last Adam’’ appears only in 
some writings of doubtful authority and a very late date, and 
there is every reason to believe that the expression Adam-ha-— 
Rishon, so frequently met with, does not signify the first 
Adam, but simply the first man.t In any case, it was 
reserved for Paul to express its doctrinal value and to show 
what harmonious relations it establishes in the whole system 
of Christian soteriology. Adam and Christ summarize the 
two periods of humanity ; they do not merely symbolize them, 
they realize them in their person by a mysterious identifica- 
tion. The first time the parallel presents itself under Paul’s 
pen it takes this antithetical form: 


1 In his Horae hebraicae et talmudicae, referring to 1 Cor. xv, 45, Schottgen 
says : Vomina zlla duo (primus et secundus Adam) /Judaezs sunt famtliarza. 
This inopportune remark has deceived the commentators who rival one 
another in affirming that the typology employed by St Paul was familiar 
to his contemporaries. In reality, even if the expression }}WN10 OTN 
(in Aramaic ANDI) OTN) is very common among the Rabbis—see Buxtorf, 
Lexicon chaldatc., talmud. et rabbin., under the word Dt%—the correspond- 
ing expression ]}7NN ONIN appears only very late in the Middle Ages, at 
the time of the Zohar and the Cabbala. The text usually quoted is from 
the Veve Shalom, ix,9: Adam postremus est Messias (WWD NIN PIAS 
DN), but the author lived in the fifteenth century; and is there not an 
unconscious Christian infiltration here ?, Adam being in Hebrew both a 
proper name and appellative noun, }}W~N17 DIN can be translated either 
first Adam ox first man, and it is the second translation that the absence of 
the second Adam suggests. There is, however, a difficulty: in this ex- 
pression the word DUN is without the article in Hebrew and without an 
emphatic position in Aramaic, which would lead us to suppose that it was 
regarded as a proper name, and it is thus indeed that Josephus takes it, 
Antig., I, iii, 3 (a6 *A8dpyou rod mpwdrov yeyovdros) ; VIII, iii, 1 (azo tod 
mpuwrou yevnbévros "Addyov). Perhaps the expression is, therefore, elliptical : 
Adam the first (man), the omission being made easier by the double 
meaning of DIN. However this may be, the idea of opposing a second Adam 
to the first came only very late ; and this was on the occasion of the twofold 
account of the creation of man in Genesis. According to some interpreters, 
the first Adam was an hermaphrodite; but they were so far from seeing 
the Messiah in the second Adan, that some of them, playing on the words 
(Q7a8, PUTIN), found in them Aaron. See Schiele, Die rabbinischen 
Parallelen zu 1 Cor. xv, 45-50 (in Zettschr. f. wtss. Theol., 1899, pp. 20-31). 
The author rightly concludes (p. 31) that this text has no parallel in the 
writings of the Rabbis; but he is wrong when he adds that Paul is indebted 
to the Greeks for its ideas and terminology. 


172 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


If there be a psychical body, there is also a spiritual body. 

Thus is it written : the first man Adam became a living soul ; the last 
Adam a quickening spirit. 

Yet that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is psychic ; 
afterwards that which is spiritual. 

The first man was of the earth, earthly ; the second man [is] from 
heaven. 

Such as is the earthly, such also are the earthly ; and such as is the 
heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly ; 

And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly.’ 


Without allowing ourselves to be diverted by the accessory 
ideas and explanatory parentheses—such as the existence 
and origin of the spiritual body and the origin, nature, and 
priority of the psychical body—let us adhere to the central 
idea. The Apostle has just said: ‘‘ It is sown a psychic 


1 1 Cor. xv, 44-49. See, below, the exegesis in detail. 

A. (44) El ort cpa Wuytxdv, ort cal mvevpatixdy: odtws Kal yéypamrat 

B. (45) "Eyévero 0 mpatos dvOpwaos Addy eis puxyny Caoav 

C.6 écyatos "Addu eis mveipa Cworovoiv. 

D. (46) "AM" od mparov 7d mvevpatixdy aGdAa 7d YuyutKor, 

éreira TO mVvEvpLATLKOV. 

A. Rightfulness of the conclusion: St est corpus animale, est et sptrttale.— 
This conclusion is asserted by St Paul rather than proved. After all, it can 
do without proof, for if a body is called psychical, when considered as being 
animated by the soul, it can be called sfzrttual, when considered as being 
animated by the spirit. The scriptural citation does not apply to the whole 
of the conditional proposition, but to the condition only : “ There is a psychical 
body, zhus it is written: Adam became a living soul (pvy7).’”’ The present 
Vulgate (sicut scriptum est) awakens the idea of a real argument here, but 
formerly the reading was sic et scriptum est, which is conformable to the Greek 
text, and indicates merely a biblical comparison. There is here then no 
argument. 

B. Zhe living soul—When God, having formed man from the slime of 
the earth, breathed into him a breath of life, man (Gen. il, 7) became a 
living soul: 3M vp DIN 7%}. There is here. a double Hebraism : 
fiert in, yiyvecOa: eis, signifies simply to become this or that, and a diving 
soud means “‘ to be animated by a principle of life, to be living, animal.”’ 
St Paul adds two words to the text quoted: Adam, because he wishes to 
prepare the idea of the new Adam; and first, because he wishes to make 
prominent the typical signification of Adam.—By virtue of this infusion of 
the soul into matter, man has a psychical body (odpa yvxixdv)—that is to 
say, a body which the soul (yvx7) causes to live, or rather a body in which the 
soul exercises the functions of life. The soul is not for the body the adequate 
principle of life, since the body needs food in order to live and because the sou] 
cannot preserve life in it indefinitely ; hence it is living, but not quickening, 
vivifying.—St Paul, following the story in Genesis, speaks here only of what 
the first man retained from the fact of his creation. And rightly : for Adam 
did not preserve and therefore did not transmit to his posterity the preter- 
natural gifts with which God had endowed him. Moreover, these gifts 
did not essentially change his nature (as St Augustine well remarks, De 
ctvit. Det, xiii, 23-24), and did not prevent his body from being psychical 
and from needing a periodical antidote against death. 

C. The quickening spirit.—This expression is suggested by the biblical 

hrase a living soul, and is modelled after it. Just as the living soul is, 
be synecdoche, a being living from the life of the soul, so the guschening 
spirit will be a being living from the life of the spirit. As the commentators 
remark with reason, St Paul does not say a “ving spirit, but a vivifying or 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 173 


body ; it shall rise a spiritual body,’’ and he concludes, after 
his long explanation, as follows: ‘‘ As we have borne the 
image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly.’? The natural (psychical) body is the perishable 
body, such as we consign to the earth, and such as the first 
man received from the hands of the Creator. The body of 
Adam was moulded out of earth (é« 79s ys) or, more exactly, 
out of slime (xovs, whence comes xoixds) ; but when God had 
breathed into him the breath of life he became a living soul: 
it is thus that Scripture designates an animated being, 
endowed with a vital principle. Adam can transmit to his 
descendants only what he possesses by nature, a natural and 
mortal body. It need not be objected to this that he was 
endowed with sanctifying grace and destined to immortality. 
These supernatural gifts, which were not inherent in him, 
and which he was unable to keep, do not form part of his 
heritage. Earthly himself, he gives birth only to an earthly 
progeny. 

Entirely different is the condition of the second Adam. He 
is from heaven, not only because heaven is his centre of 
gravitation and the actual place of his sojourn, whence he 
will return in glory at the moment of the parousia, but he is 
from heaven, above all, by reason of his divine pre-existence 
and the celestial gifts which it confers upon him for himself 
and for those who are his own. He is heavenly by every 


De ee 


quickening spirit (Theophylact : Ovx eimev eis mvetpa Cav, ddAad Cworovoty, 
76 peilov eimdv). There are, in fact, two extreme differences: first, the 
quickening spirit causes its possessor to live—that is to say, it is an adequate 
cause of life, and the body which it animates is for ever @ sperttual body 
(cpa mvevpartxdv) ; secondly, it makes others live, on condition,that they 
are united to it, and it is precisely on that account that it is called vivifying. 
That Paul has in view this kind of vivification appears from 1 Cor. xv, 22 
(odrws Kal ev TG XpworH mavres Cworroen O@yncovrat) and from xv, 49 
(dopéowpev rv €ixdva Tod érovpaviov). The commentary of St Thomas is, 
therefore, excellent: S%cut Adam consecutus est perfecttonem sut esse per 
animam, ita et Christus perfectionem sut esse, in quantum homo, per Spiritum 
sanctum. Et ideo cum anima non possit nist proprium corpus vivificare, 
ideo Adam factus est in animam non vivificantem sed viventem tantum ,; 
sed Christus factus est in spiritum viventem et vtutficantem. 

D. Priority of the spiritual over the psychical—Nature and grace proceed 
from the less perfect to the more perfect. “ Not that which is spiritual comes 
first, but that which is psychical.” The principle is a general one, and there 
is no occasion to understand odpa after 7d mvevparixdy and 76 puxtxov. 
Paul applies this general rule to the particular case in question and thus shows 
by a plausible reason that the second Adam was bound to come after the first. 
This is not an accidental succession, but an order conformable to divine 
wisdom. By his insistence on justifying this order, the Apostle refutes in 
advance the rationalistic systems, which make of the second Adam the ideal 
or heavenly man, whose existence had preceded the creation of the first man. 

Rey Coraxv; 47: 

6 mpa&tos dvOpwros ex yas xotKds, Primus homo de terra, terrenus : 

6 Sevrepos avOpwros €£ ovpavod. secundus homo de caelo, caelestis. 


In the two parts of the phrase, the verb Zo de must be understood: ‘* The 


174° THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


right, and his resurrected body is spiritual, in order to be 
freed from the limitations of matter and entirely dominated 
by the Spirit. If the psychical body is that which serves as 
an organ to the sensitive soul and is adapted to it, so the 
spiritual body will be that which serves as an instrument to a 
principle of activities of a superior order—called by St Paul 
spirit—and which shares in its perfections. It is at the 
moment of the resurrection that Jesus Christ actually 
assumes this spiritual body, to which he is entitled by the 
fulness of the Holy Spirit possessed from the moment of 
his miraculous conception, and by the merit acquired in the 
work of redemption; and it is also at the instant of the 
resurrection that he becomes a quickening spirit, capable of 
bestowing and transferring the supernatural life with which 
he is endowed. ‘Thus, while the first Adam bequeaths death 
to all who are one with him by the fact of natural generation, 
the second Adam bequeaths life to all who are one with him 
by the fact of supernatural regeneration. Adam is “‘ of the 
earth,’’ he is ‘‘ earthly,’’ he becomes a ‘‘ living soul ’’ at the 
instant of his creation, when he begins to be the head of 
the human race; the parallelism invites us, therefore, to refer 
the three contrasted terms to the moment when Jesus Christ 
becomes the glorious Head of humanity restored. The 
Apostle, after a long détour, returns to his point of de- 
parture: ‘‘ By a man came death, and by a man the resur- 
rection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ 


first man (made) from earth zs earthly : the second manzs from heaven.’ The 
Vulgate adds the word cae/estzs, employed in the following verse and contained 
asto its meaning in de cas/o. It is very easy to understand why the first man 
is earthly or, more exactly, made out of slime, mud (yoixds) ; it is because, 
according to Genesis, he was formed out of the slime of the earth (ii, 7: 
xovv AaBav ano tis yas. Cf. Eccl. iii, 20; xii, 7; 1 Mac. ii, 63). The 
question shows that it is necessary to take earthly in a physical sense and not 
in a moral sense (having earthly inclinations—that is to say, low and bad 
ones) as certain commentators think, after the example of Chrysostom. The 
same remark applies to the word Aeaven/y in the succeeding verse. 

In what way is the second man from heaven? This phrase, in order to 
correspond to the first, must describe the orzgim and the nature of the new 
Adam—that is, Jesus Christ, as the principle of the supernatural life. Now, 
from this point of view, the new Adam is not from heaven because he will 
come from heaven on the day of the parousta, nor because he was conceived 
miraculously by the action of the Holy Spirit (that does not constitute a new 
Adam), nor because, before appearing on earth, he possessed a heavenly 
body (for, independent of the other absurdities of this strange theory, he 
would not thus be the second Adam, but the first). He is from heaven by 
reason of his divine nature, by his personality and by the right which it gives 
him to possess the fulness of the Holy Spirit for himself and for those who are 
united to him. And he becomes, in the full force of the term, a heavenly 
man, a quickening spirit, at the moment when he receives actually in his 
soul and in his body the glory which is due him, and when, the work of 
redemption being accomplished, he can make us partakers of this glory. 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 175 


all shall be made alive.’’! The character of both the first and 
second Adam is essentially a representative one. Adam 
bears in himself the whole human race; hence what applies 
to the father applies also to the children. Being, according 
to the flesh, the descendants of an earthly man, we shall be 
earthly like him; being, according to the spirit, the de- 
scendants of a heavenly man, we shall, like him, be 
heavenly. We receive in turn the image of each.? 


1 1 Cor. xv, 21-22: Quontam quidem (=enim, yap) per hominem mors, et 
per hominem resurrectio mortuorum. Et (=etenim, ydp) stcut in Adam 
omnes mortuntur, tta et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur.—This text plays a 
great role in Pauline soteriology which constantly finds its support in the 
principle of solidarity. The meaning is a little obscured in Latin by the 
suppression of the two words ydp, which should be translated by entm and 
etenim ; but in the original it is very clear: verse 21 gives a reason for the 
appellation primitiae dormtentium, which has just been given to Christ; 
and verse 22 justifies and confirms this reason. It can be paraphrased thus : 
Christ is called the first frusts of them who sleep, not only because he is the 
first of those raised to die no more, but also because he is for the others the 
pledge and promise of the glorious resurrection. or (verse 21) as all die dy the 
deed (8d) of one man, it is proper and even necessary (in our present provi- 
dential order) that all should be made alive by the deed of one man. /ndeed 
(verse 22) it is so ; since if all dée 7z Adam (év), being united to him by a bond 
of carnal solidarity, so all shall be likewise made alive in Christ, being united 
to him by a bond of spiritual solidarity. A parallel, doubled by a contrast, 
between the two Adams. 

Several Fathers and ancient commentators thought that to make altve 
meant to recall to life, and must be understood as referring to the resurrection 
of both the good and the wicked, according to John v, 29 and Acts xxiv, 15. 
But many others (St. Augustine, St Leo the Great, St Cyril of Alexandria), 
with the majority of the moderns, have clearly understood that this exegesis 
is impossible. Indeed: (2) in the whole of this chapter St Paul is speaking 
exclusively of the resurrection of the just ; (6) he speaks here of Christ as the 
first fruits of them who sleep ; (c) he speaks of those who shall be made alive 
in Christ (verse 22) because they belong to Christ (gut sunt Christe, verse 23). 
It is a question here, therefore, of the glorious resurrection only. 

Set OF XV, Ao, 49; 

Olos 6 yoixds, Towobrot Kat of yotxol, 48. Qualis terrenus, tales et terrent, 
Kat olos 6 émovpdvios, Towodrot Kat of et gualis caelestis, tales et caelestes. 
€rroupaviot’ 


Kai xabas édopécapev tiv €ixdva Tod 49. Igitur, stcut portavimus tma- 
oixod, dopéowpev Kal THY Elxdva Too ginem terrent, portemus etimaginem 
€rroupaviov. caelestis. 


The reasoning is clear. Sons resemble their father; consequently, the 
descendants of the first Adam, who is earthly, will be earthly, like him, 
while the descendants of the second Adam will partake of his heavenly nature. 
—In the following verse, the meaning differs a little, according as one reads 
the future indicative gopéoopev or the aorist subjunctive fopécwyev. At first 
sight, the indicative seems preferable, for this clause is the end of a series 
of deductions, and nothing in Greek announces an exhortation (the present 
Latin zgztur, which could suggest this meaning, corresponds in Greek to the 
simple copula xaé). But the subjunctive, which is better attested, allows 
also an excellent explanation. St Paul very often passes naturally from 
teaching to moral exhortation ; and here the transition was all the easier 
since the Apostle, as usual, includes under only one concept grace and glory, 
which he calls by the same name: the image of the heavenly man (7) etka Tod 


176 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The text which we have just studied is made up entirely of 
antitheses: differences, between the two Adams, in their 
origin, nature, action, and destiny; the text which is now to 
engage our attention (Rom. v, 12-21) unites the parallel with 
the contrast, although the contrast dominates : 

‘‘ Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into this world, 
and by sin death,’’ so by one man has justice entered into 
this world, and, by justice the life which was lost in ‘* Adam, 
who is the figure of the Adam that is to come.’’—First 
similitude. 

‘‘ But not as the offence, so also is the gift. For, if by the 
offence of one, many (0! woAAoi =all, whatever their number) 
died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace 
of one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many ’’—that 
is, unto all.—First contrast. 

‘‘ And not as it was by one sin [by the act of one sinner] 
so also is the gift; for judgement | proceeds] from one [bad 
act to end] in condemnation, but the free gift [proceeds] 
from many offences unto justification.’’—Second contrast. 

‘‘For if by one man’s offence death reigned by the [deed 
of] one [Adam], much more they who receive abundance of 
grace and of the gift of justice shall reign in life through 
one, Jesus Christ.’’—Third contrast. 

‘‘ Therefore, as by one sole fault [judgement falls upon] all 
men unto condemnation, so also by one sole meritorious act 
ieee comes] upon all men unto justification of life.’’— 

econd similitude. 

‘‘ For as by the disobedience of one man many (oi roAAoi= 
all, whatever their number) were made sinners, so also by the 
obedience of one many (that is to say, all whatever be their 
number) shall be made just.’’—Third similitude. 

‘‘Now the Law entered in, that sin might abound; but 
where sin abounded, grace did superabound; that as sin hath 
reigned by death, so,also grace might reign by justice unto 
life everlasting through Jesus Christ our Lord.’’’—Résumé 
of the parallel and the contrast. 

All in all, without counting the final conclusion, there are 
three analogies and three contrasts. The first analogy refers 
to a fact: the introduction into the world and universal 
diffusion of sin and death on the part of Adam, and of 
justice and life on the part of Christ. Quite a long 





€novpaviov). It depends on us to preserve on earth this still imperfect — 
image, and this is the condition of our some day being clothed upon with the 
glorified image. If we adopt the future reading, it would follow that, at 
present, we should have neither the image of the first Adam, which we formerly 
wore, but which we wear no longer (é€fopécayev), nor the image of the second 
Adam, which, according to this hypothesis, we do not yet wear (¢opégopev). 
This is a serious objection to the reading popécopev. 

1 Rom. v. 12-21. See, for the meaning of the words and the construction 
of the phrase, Vol. I, pp. 215-19. 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 177 


parenthesis, explaining that all men die in Adam since all 
have sinned in Adam, disturbs the parallelism a little; but 
the typological connection, recalled by a word (rvzos), is 
none the less clear. The second analogy concerns the 
manner: the union of solidarity, which exists between the 
entire race and its respective heads, without regard to 
the number of individuals represented. The third analogy 
relates to the meritorious cause; here the obedience of 
Christ, there the disobedience of Adam; one has made all 
men sinners, as the other will constitute them just. Side by 
side with the analogies stand the contrasts. The first 
opposes the instruments to each other: sin and grace, but 
good proves superior to evil, and grace is more powerful to 
save than sin is to destroy. The second compares the effects: 
here only one sin which is transmitted, there one single 
act of grace which effaces and atones for innumerable sins; 
there is an evident excess in favour of grace. The third 
contrasts the persons: on the one hand, only a man; on the 
other, Jesus Christ, whose name is above every name. 


2. To atone for sin and to conquer death was the role of 
the second Adam. He will atone for sin by the gift of 
justice; he will conquer death by associating us with his 
life. ‘‘ Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.’’ 
This motive was necessary to draw him down to earth. On 
this point the teaching of the Apostle to the Gentiles has in 
it nothing peculiar to himself; St John, St Peter, as well as 
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Synoptists 
speak in absolutely the same way. All portray the mission 
of Christ as having a relation with sin; all of them present 
his death as the expiation of our transgressions; not one of 
them gives us to understand that he would have come to this 
earth if there had not been sinners here to save.? As nothing 
makes up for the silence of revelation, when we search into 
the mystery of the divine counsel, the hypothesis of the 
incarnation for another providential order can have only a 
precarious foundation,* unless we impose upon God, in his 


1 1 Tim. i, 9. It is necessary to compare the texts relating to the mission 
of Christ (Rom. viii, 3-4 ; Gal. iv, 4) with those which say that Jesus Christ’s 
end is the salvation of the world (Gal. i, 4; 1 Cor. xv, 3; 2 Cor. v, 21, etc.). 

* Heb. x, 4-7 (the Word becomes incarnate in order to SuRPeracae the 
inadequacy of the ancient sacrifices) ; Luke xix, 10 (the Son of Man comes 
to save that which was lost) ; 1 John iv, 10 (God sends his Son as a propitia- 
tion for our sins); John ili, 17 (God sends his Son to save the world).— 
Compare also Heb. i, 3; ii, 17; v, 1-3; ix, 26-28; 1 Pet. iii, 18; 1 Johni, 7; 
ii, 2; iii, 5 ; Apoc. i, 5, etc. 

* This is the reason given by St Thomas, Summa Theol., IIa, qu. 1, art 3.— 
The Fathers, whose texts will be found in Petavius, do not assign to the 
incarnation any other motive than that of saving the human race. The 
contrary thesis can evidently end only in a perhaps, not in a definite conclusion. 
It would be otherwise if it were proved that the grace of the angels is derived 


II. 12 


178 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


activities ad extra, the obligation of the most perfect, which 
is the very negation of liberty. 

Besides the special mission which accredits him, the second 
Adam must possess two essential qualities: human nature 
and exemption from sin. 

That Jesus Christ is exempt from sin is the teaching of St 
John, St Peter, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
of St Paul himself. In St John, Jesus challenges his enemies 
to find him guilty of sin: Quis ex vobis arguet me de 
peccato? For him, as for the other evangelists, the sinless- 
ness of Jesus is a fact of experience; it results from a wholly 
pure and saintly life. The writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews deduces it from the priesthood of Christ: since the 
ideal priest must be ‘‘ holy, undefiled, and separated from 
sinners’’ by an impassable barrier, ‘‘ tempted in all things 
like as we are, without sin.’’ St Peter deduces it from the 
character of the victim: ‘‘ Christ also died once for our sins, 
the just for the unjust,’’ and we have been redeemed ‘‘ by the 
precious blood of Christ as of a lamb unspotted and un- 
defiled.’’ As for St Paul, it is on the mission of the second 
Adam that he founds the sinlessness of the Saviour. Jesus 
Christ receives a mission ‘‘ to conquer sin in the flesh,’’ and 
he can conquer it in others only after having conquered it in 
himself; also, although he has a flesh entirely like our own, 
he has a sinful flesh only in appearance. Not only has he no 
experience of sin, but he could not have anything in common 
with sin; therefore ‘‘ God made him sin for us, that we might 
be made the justice of God in him,’’ sure that, far from 
being defiled by contact with sinners, Christ would com- 
municate to them his own justice.? 

But sin is one thing and human nature another. ‘‘ If 
Christ was not truly man,’’ said Tertullian, ‘‘ all his life is 
nothing but a lie’’: his virgin-birth was a lie, his agony and 
passion, his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection ; 
and, concludes St Irenzeus, ‘‘ the whole scheme of redemption 
is a lie.’’ In fact, if Jesus Christ was not truly man, he 
would not be our brother; if he were not our brother, he 
would not be our Head in the strict sense of the word; if 





from Christ, avd that the predestination of the angels is anterior (signo 
rationis) to the prevision of the sin of Adam. But neither of these two theses 
is absolutely established, and it would be necessary for them to be proved 
together ; for it might be that God, foreseeing the fall of man and the sending 
of his Son as the Saviour of the human race, had resolved to grant his grace 
to the angels also through the mediation of his beloved Son. 

? A comparison of the, four authors is instructive. For St Paul, Rom. 
vill, 3, see pp. 163-5; 2 Cor. v, 21, see p. 204.—For St Peter, 1 Pet. i, 19 
(dpvot dudpov Kat domidov Xpiorod); iii, 18 (Sikatos vmép adikwv).—For 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, vii, 26 (6ct0s, dxaxos, dulavros, Kexwptopevos ard 
rav duaptwAdv) ; ix, 14 (duwpos); iv, 15; ix. 28 (ywpis duaprias). Cf. 
ii, 14-18.—For St John, viii, 46 (ris €€ vudv edeyyet pe wept duaprias). 


THE REDEEMING MISSION 179 


he were not our Head, he would not be our representative ; 
his grace would be peculiar and personal to himself and his 
justice would not be ours by any right. Thus is explained 
the insistence with which Paul incessantly teaches the reality 
of the human nature of Christ. 


CHAP TREK 
THE REDEEMING DEATH 


I—SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS 


1 Real Sacrifice. 2. Realizing the Ancient Types. 3. Voluntary 
Sacrifice. ; 


I. SACRIFICE, a religious rite in which a 
sentient object is destroyed in honour of the 
divinity, differs from immaterial offerings — 
prayers, vows, voluntary fasts—and from simple 
offerings of a material order—presents of money, 

natural gifts, votive monuments, the erection of temples and 
oratories, consecration of persons—in a word, from all obla- 
tions designed to perpetuate liturgical ceremonies and to 
maintain the permanent service of the divinity. It is not 
expedient to specify further, by including in the definition 
of sacrifice either the manner of offering it, or the im- 
mediate purpose intended by the worshippers, or the mode 
of operation, real or supposed, of the sacred rite, for a too 
explicit definition has the twofold inconvenience of not being 
applicable to every sacrifice, and of being founded on 
debatable theories. Sacrifice is prayer in action. Man has 
always the intention of pleasing the divinity and rendering him 
propitious to himself ; but the means employed vary infinitely 
according to the gross, naive, lofty, or sublime conceptions 
which the worshipper entertains of his deity, and according 
to the feelings of gratitude, homage, respect, impetration, 
repentance, or obedience, which he wishes to express. When 
the object to be sacrificed is a living being, the death of the 
latter is the usual condition of it: from this are evolved two 
kinds of sacrifices, bloody and unbloody. In both cases, 
the partial destruction of the victim suffices for the symbol- 
ism, and a total destruction is required only for certain 
special sacrifices. After a part of the object sacrificed has 
been consumed by fire, or poured out in libation, or destroyed 
in any way, the remainder generally is utilized for a sacred 
banquet, a natural complement of the sacrifice, or else is 
reserved for the exclusive use of the priests, the accredited 
representatives of the divinity. 

It is not easy to see how anyone, who cherishes no pre- 
conceived theory or dogmatic prejudice, can deny that 
Christ’s death means for St Paul a sacrifice. Before 
approaching the formal proofs of this, it is well to pass in 
review the less explicit texts which stand by themselves, but 

180 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 181 


the impression of which as a whole tends to evoke irre- 
sistibly the idea of sacrifice and indeed of a bloody sacrifice. 

All the effects of redemption are ascribed to the blood of 
Christ: We have redemption through his blood’ . . . God 
hath pacified through the blood of his cross the things that 
are on earth and the things that are in heaven.* You 
(Gentiles) who some time were afar off are made nigh in 
the blood of Christ. . . .° Justified now by his blood, much 
more shall we be saved from wrath through him.* To drink 
of the consecrated chalice is the communion of the blood of 
Christ,> and the unworthy communicant profanes the blood 
of Christ because the consecrated chalice contains the blood 
which seals the new covenant.® 

When it ts not directly to the blood, it is to the violent 
death of Christ that the effects of redemption are attributed: 
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. . . .’ 
He died for us in order that those who live may live no more 
for themselves but for him who died for them and rose 
again. . . .2 When we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 
If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the 
death of his Son, how much more, being reconciled, shall we 


be saved by his life? . . .° Now he hath reconciled us in 
the body of his flesh through death to make us holy and un- 
spotted and blameless. . . .1° Jesus Christ died for us that, 


whether we watch or sleep, we may live together with him.*? 
Jesus Christ ‘‘ gave himself to be a ransom for all;’’*? we 
have been ‘‘ bought with the great price’’ of his blood ;'° 
‘‘he hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being 
made a curse for us’’!4 on the cross; if justice, the fruit of 
redemption, came to us from elsewhere, ‘‘ Christ would have 
died in vain.’!5 All this points to one and the same idea of a 
bloody sacrifice. 


2. The apostolic doctrine of Christ as victim was, for the 
contemporaries of St Paul, a strange novelty. The Jews 
knew well the value of trials accepted with resignation, the 
efficacy of the prayers of the just, the reversibility of merits 
and demerits, but, except with extreme repugnance, they 
never honoured the idea of a suffering Messiah nor accorded 
any expiatory value to such sufferings. The sufferings of 
the Messiah1® are not his personal sufferings, but the 
terrestrial calamities and cosmical commotions which are to 


ea thw) eg Bey * Col. 1; 20. 3 Eph ii, 13. 

« Rom. v, 9. sir Gorexe1G. Sexi Corixi, 27; 
teieCor. XV; 3: ao ara ci kt ® Rom. v, 8-10. 
20) Col? 1, 22. Mey ness. Vv, 10. Mey Timesty 0: 
13 Cor. vi, 20; Vil, 23. : 

14 Gal. iii, 13. abe (Salat e21, 


te mvinn ‘San; cf. Mark xiii, 8; Matt. xxiv, 8: dex) ddan. 


182 THE THEOLOGY OF. ST PAUL 


precede his coming; they are in some way like the world’s 
pangs of childbearing in bringing forth the Messiah. To the 
question : Did the Jews of that time believe that the Messiah 
was destined to suffer, and that his sufferings would result in 
expiating the crimes of men, a decidedly negative answer 
must be given. 

Neither the Targum nor the Talmud of Jerusalem make 
the slightest allusion to a suffering Messiah. There is 
nothing more curious than the Targum of Jonathan on 
chapter liit of Isaias, recognized as messianic. ‘‘ All that is 
said of the sufferings of the servant is violently distorted 
from its natural meaning and applied to the people.’’! If the 
Talmud of Babylon, a compilation of the fifth century, 
mentions three times the sufferings of the Messiah, they are 
the sufferings endured by the Messiah before entering upon 
his role of Saviour. Raymond Martin believed indeed that 
he had discovered a text which treats of a suffering Messiah ;? 
only it is very probable that the learned Dominican made use 
of a copy interpolated by a Christian hand, for his famous 
passage is not found in any other manuscript. Nor have we 
any more authority for maintaining that the Jews divided 
into two their originally unique Messiah, in order to attribute 
to the Messiah, son of Joseph, the expiatory sufferings, while 
they had reserved for the Messiah, son of Judah, the glory 
and the triumphs. ‘‘ The Messiah, son of Joseph, is not a 
suffering Messiah, he is a slain Messiah.’’? 

In St Paul, on the contrary, the immolation of Jesus Christ 
is expressly likened to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, to the 
sacrifice which seals the new covenant, to the sacrifice of the 
great day of expiation, and to another sacrifice which is 
perhaps the burnt sacrifice, but which it is not possible surely 
to determine. 

Paschal Lamb.—St Paul writes to the Corinthians: 
‘“Know you not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole 
lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new 
paste, as you are unleavened; for Christ our pasch is 
sacrificed.’’* Two circumstances gave to these recommenda- 
tions greater actuality and appropriateness. Easter was 


1 Condamin, Le hure d’/sate, 1905, p. 326. 

* Pugio fidet, fol. 675, quoting the $z/rd (midrash of Leviticus). 

8 Lagrange, Le Messtantsme chez les Jutfs, 1909, p. 236. 

‘1 Cor. v, 7: "ExxaOdpatre rHv madaav Cipnv, iva Fre véow dpupapua, 
Kabws €ore alupow Kat yap TO macya judy érvln Xpiords. There is here 
an evident allusion to Ex. xii, 21 (@vcare 70 mdoxa, xiii, 6-9. Compare 
1 Pet. i, 19 ([eAurpaéOnre] Tysiw aipare ws dpvod dudpov Kal aontdov Xpicrod) 
and Apoc. v, 6, 12 (76 dpviov 76 e€adaypevov) ; vii, 14 (ev TH alwart rod apviov), 
etc. Jesus is called “the Lamb” twenty-nine times in the Apocalypse. 
We may admit that there and also in John i, 29, 30 (iS€ 6 duvos tod Oeod) 
the name of the Lamb is derived from the prophecy of Isa. liii, 7 (cf. 
Acts viii, 32) ; but 1 Cor. v, 7 and 1 Pet. i, 19 certainly refer to the paschal 
lamb, the symbolism of which St John also points out (John xix, 36 ; Ex. xii, 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 183 


approaching, and at that period the Gentile Christians 
celebrated the solemnity commemorative of their salvation, 
not in the Jewish manner by abstaining from fermented 
bread, but in a spiritual way, by being themselves azymoi— 
that is, pure from all moral corruption. Now, the presence 
among the Christians of Corinth of a man who was guilty 
of incest was a blot upon the entire church. The Apostle 
orders the expulsion of the author of this scandal: “ Put 
away the evil one from among yourselves;’’ for he may end 
by corrupting you, as a little leaven corrupteth the whole 
lump of fresh dough. If, in itself, this exhortation is not 
applicable to all times, how much more impressive is it on 
the anniversary of the sacrifice of the cross: ‘‘ Our paschal 
Lamb, Christ, is sacrificed; therefore let us feast, not with 
the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, 
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’’ What 
the Pasch is for the Jews, Christ sacrificed is for us ; he is the 
sacrifice of our deliverance, the sacred feast which puts an 
end to our servitude; thus the types have had their fulfilment, 
the shadows have disappeared, and we are henceforth in the 
region of spiritual realities. 

Sacrifice of the New Covenant.—Christ, the true paschal 
Lamb, is also the victim who seals the new covenant. At 
the moment of concluding the old covenant, Moses offered 
burnt sacrifices and peace-victims, poured out part of the 
blood at the foot of the altar and sprinkled the people with 
the remainder, saying: ‘‘ Behold the blood of the covenant 
which Jehovah hath concluded with you.’’ Familiar with the 
story of the Exodus, the witnesses of the Last Supper could 
not mistake his meaning when they heard Jesus say in offer- 
ing them the eucharistic cup: ‘‘ This chalice is the blood of 
the new covenant,’’ or ‘‘ This chalice is the new covenant 
[made] in my blood.’’! Whether he referred directly to the 


a ere ES ee Se ee eae 
46).—The Jeaven was the symbol of corruption (Matt. xvi, 6; Gal v, 9), 
and its rapid action was proverbial (Matt. xiii, 33 ; Luke xii, 1; Gal. v, 9). 
Christians are to be azymoz, that is to say, as St Paul explains, free from all 
leaven of wickedness and malice. The figure in 1 Cor. v, 7 (iva Fre dvpapa 
Kabws €ore dlvpor) is therefore clear, and it is superfluous to attribute. to 
afuyos the unusual meaning of “ abstaining from leaven” (by analogy 
with dovros, dowos). The Apostle says: “ By your pure conduct and your 
sincere faith be like fresh dough, véov dvpaya (véos means recent in regard 
to time ; xavvos, new, in regard to quality), because you are—or ought to be, 
as Christians—azy mot, free from the fermentation of corruption.” We see 
that the metaphor is suitable to all periods, although it is more appropriate 
to the time of the passover, which suggested it. Similarly the typology of 
the paschal lamb does not seem to require that Jesus should die on the day 
and at the hour when the paschal Jamb was sacrificed. But this controversy 
is foreign to the present topic. 

* 1 Cor. xi, 25.—It is necessary to compare it with the story in Ex. 
xxiv, 8; with the typical application of Heb. ix, 15-22; with the allusion in 


1 Pet. i, 2 (els draxony cat pavtiopdv aipatos "I. X.); also Mark xiv, 24; 
Matt. xxvi, 28. 


184 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


sacrifice of the altar or to that of Calvary matters little to the 
present inquiry; for, after all, it is the same sacrifice, and 
the Saviour’s words would have no meaning if the blood of 
the Eucharist were other than the blood of the cross. Now, 
this divine blood has for its special efficacy to seal the 
covenant predicted by Jeremias, just as the blood of the 
victims offered by Moses sealed the covenant of Sinai; with 
this twofold difference, however, that it purifies souls by 
reaching their bodies and that it produces holy dispositions 
instead of merely confirming them. 

Sacrifice of expiation or propitiation.—The sacrifice for 
sin is the most characteristic and most common part of the 
Mosaic ritual. The Epistle to the Hebrews develops its 
typology. With this category of sacrifices are often com- 
pared two passages of St Paul which really are connected 
with quite a different order of ideas. On the other hand, the 
Epistle to the Romans compares the death of Jesus to the 
sacrifice of expiation which was par excellence the sacrifice 
for sin: ‘‘ God hath proposed Christ Jesus to be a propitiay 
tion through faith in his blood.’’?? Whatever may be the 
precise meaning of ‘Aacrjpiov— victim of propitiation, 
instrument of propitiation, or even mercy-seat—it follows - 
inevitably from this text that the sacrifice of the cross is 
for Christians and carried out in a more excellent manner 
what the solemn day of Kippurim, the annual sacrifice of 
expiation or propitiation, was for the Jews. ‘‘It is im- 
possible,’’ says Sanday in his commentary, ‘‘to eliminate 
from this passage the twofold idea of a sacrifice and a 
sacrifice of propitiation.’’ Godet, too, writes: ‘* The idea of 
sacrifice, if it is not in the word itself, appears from the 
expression by my blood. For what is a means of propitiation 
into which blood enters as an agency if it be not a sacrifice ?”’ 
The discordant voices of some heterodox theologians, desirous 
of avoiding an embarrassing text, are now scarcely heeded. 

Sacrifice in ‘general.—‘‘ Christ hath loved us and hath 
delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God 
for an odour of sweetness.’’? We recognize here a clear 

1 For 2 Cor. v, 21 see p. 204; and for Rom. viii, 3 see pp. 163-5. 

2 Rom. iii, 25. The generic sense of ‘Aaorijpiov is determined by the 
twofold fact that fAdoxecBar or éfAdoxeofar correspond to the Hebrew 
kipper “to expiate, to render propitious,” and that the day of Kippurim or 
Expiation is called 4 jpyépa rob fAacpod (Lev. xxv, 9). Cf. Lev. xxiii, 27, 28 
(Zorw yap hepa eftAacpod atrn tytv efAdcacba repli dudv evavre Kupiov) ; 
Num. v. 8, etc. In the New Testament this word and its derivatives are 
rare: Heb. ii, 17 ((Adaxeo8ar) ; 1 John ii, 2; iv. 10 (iAacpds) ; Rom. ili, 25 
(f{Aaorypiov) ; Heb. ix, § (iAaor#piov, in the sense of the mercy-seat) ; but 
the fundamental meaning “‘ to expiate, to render propitious,” appears always 
clearly. Cf. Vol. I, pp. 429-32. 

2 Eph. v, 2: 6 Xpuords hydanoe suas Kal mapéSwxev éavtov trép huav 
mpoopopav Kal Ouoiav 7H Ged eis Cop7v evwdias. There is a manifest allusion 
to Ps. xxxix, 7! Ovotav xai mpoogopav (NN2ID4 Mt) ov« 76Ancas, odpa Se 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 185 


allusion to. the words of the Psalmist: ‘‘ Sacrifice and obla- 
tion thou wouldest not; burnt offering and sin offering thou 
didst not require.’’ But if it is certain that Paul is speaking 
of Christ offering himself in sacrifice, the nature of the 
sacrifice is not indicated. 

Of the four words of the passage appealed to—the (peace) 
victim, the oblation, the burnt offering, and the sacrifice for 
sin—which correspond to the four principal kinds of Mosaic 
sacrifice, the Apostle retains only the first two, which, in 
reality, include the other two. It is, therefore, probable that, 
having in view the general idea of sacrifice, of which Jesus 
Christ is the perfect antitype, he denotes by ‘‘ victim ’’ (@vaia) 
the bloody sacrifice of Calvary, and by ‘‘ oblation’”’ ( rpooqopd) 
the voluntary and loving offering which Christ makes of him- 
self to his Father. The two notions of priest and victim 
would, therefore, be associated here; and, as in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, be reunited in the person of Jesus.? 


.3. Certain theologians think they are doing enough if they 
show that the death of Christ is a true sacrifice, realizing the 
typical meaning of the sacrifices of the old Law; and they 
hasten to conclude that the sacrifice of the cross operates in 
the same way as that of the victims of the Jewish ritual, 
although, it is true, in a more excellent manner, since the 
antitype eclipses the type and the reality effaces the symbols. 
That is a defect of logic and of method. On Calvary Jesus 
Christ is not merely a victim; he is the sacrificing priest ; and 
he is so by his Father’s will. These three things—the 
passive immolation of Christ, the oblation which he makes 
of himself, and the command of God—form one act, the 
elements of which we can clearly distinguish without, how- 
ever, having the right to dissociate them. Let us see how 
St Paul presents these two new aspects of the drama of 
redemption. 

Jesus Christ delivered himself up to death; he delivered 
himself up in order to save us; and he delivered himself up 
through love: this is the epitome of his active part in the 
tragedy of Calvary. St Paul is never tired of repeating: 


Karnptiow pou ddoKxatrwua kal wept duaprias (AXDM nbiy) ovK 7TNCaGS. 
What makes one think that the Apostle has this text in view is the analogy 
of the ideas, the quotation repeated from the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5-8), 
and the fact that zpoodopa is not found elsewhere in the Septuagint. 

1 The Epistle to the Hebrews (ix, 22-26 and elsewhere) generalizes the 
theory of sacrifice and shows the necessity of it for the two Testaments ; 
formerly, there was no remission of sins without the shedding of blood ; 
now, it is the same, only the victim is perfect and consequently unique ; 
formerly, there was a succession of high priests who repeated unceasingly 
their offerings for themselves and the people; mow, there is only one high 
priest, eternal and immaculate, who gives an infinite value to the sacrifice 
offered once for all. 


186 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL © 


“* Christ hath loved us and hath delivered himself for us, an 
oblation and a sacrifice [agreeable] to God for an odour of 
sweetness.’ Christ has loved the Church and has delivered 
himself up for it, in order to sanctify it.2 I live in the faith 
of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.? 
Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins that he might deliver 
us from this present wicked world, according to the will of 
God and our Father. The mediator of God and men, the 
man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all.’’5 
These texts need no commentary. Paul crowns the work by 
reminding us of the glorious manifestation ‘‘ of our great 
God and Saviour, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us, that 
he might redeem us from all iniquity.’’® In this teaching, 
taken purposely from all the groups of the Epistles, two 
points are to be noticed: first, if Jesus Christ offers himself 
for us, as a sacrifice to save us, it is because he alone has the 
power to do so, since he is the only mediator between God 
and men; and secondly, he does so only according to the 
intention and with the sanction of his Father, who has given 
him a formal mandate for that purpose. This last considera- 
tion brings us naturally to the second series of texts, in which 
the divine initiative is manifest. 

By the very fact of sending his Son to save the world, God 
made him his plenipotentiary. Jesus Christ had thenceforth 
only to consult his Father’s will and conform to it. There- 
fore the offering which he makes of himself, at the command 
of God, has the value of an act of obedience, a meritorious 
act which, on the one hand, annuls and atones for the dis- 
obedience of Adam,’ and, on the other, earns a reward for its 
author. Christ Jesus ‘‘ humbled himself, becoming obedient 
unto death, even to the death of the cross, wherefore God 
also hath exalted him.’’® By virtue of the divine command, 
received and executed by the Son, the Apostle can say in- 
differently either that Christ offers himself as a victim for our 
salvation, or that his Father delivers him up to death for us. 
““ He spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for 
us all. God commendeth his charity towards us because, 
when as yet we were sinners, Christ died for us.’’? The 
dominant idea of these passages is that the command 
intimated by the Father and the voluntary obedience of the 
Son are, on the part of both the Son and the Father, an equal 
and sovereign manifestation of love. There is hardly need to 
recall the fact that St John follows this teaching of the 
Apostle to the Gentiles very closely.1° 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews comes still nearer 


1 Eph. v, 2. Se Ephy vj025: 3 Gal. ii. 20. 
‘ Gal. i, 4. § 1 Tim. ii, 6. * Titus i713: 
7 Rom. v, 19. ® Phil. ii, 8, 9. 


* Rom. viii, 32; v, 8. 10 John iii, 16. 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 187 


to it in thought, if not in expression. The picture of the 
priestly victim, consecrated by the Father, corresponds 
exactly, feature for feature, with the portrait which we have 
drawn above, according to the teacher of the Gentiles. The 
name of priest, it is true, is here wanting, but the sacerdotal 
act is not the less clearly described. In both cases there is 
a victim, who is none other than Jesus Christ; it is the victim 
who offers himself, delivers himself up and gives himself ; 
and the Father intervenes, not only to accept the offering, 
but to command it. In both cases, the oblation constitutes 
an act of obedience and an obedience prompted by love. In 
both cases the sacrifice has for its object and result to 
expiate, efface, and destroy sin, to render God propitious and 
to open to mankind the gates of heaven. This being so, the 
mention of the priest in the Epistle to the Hebrews ts of only 
secondary importance, more interesting from the point of 
view of special terminology than as the basis of the teach- 
ing itself. 

On the part of Christ his redeeming death is an act of 
obedience; and this act is meritorious in regard to the 
humanity which it saves, in regard to the Father whom it 
renders propitious, and in regard to the Son who owes his 
exaltation to it. We conclude from this, both directly and by 
analysis, that this act was free, since without freedom its 
merit is not conceivable; and that it was a response to a 
divine command, since there is no obedience where there is 
no command. St John expressly affirms these two conclu- 
sions, but does not teach us, any more than does St Paul, the 
means of reconciling them with the sinlessness of Jesus 
Christ. That is a purely scholastic question, the solution of 
which must not be asked of the inspired authors. I say 
purely scholastic, for it depends on five or six problems dis- 
cussed in the school, which revelation alone does not solve. 
Whence comes the sinlessness of Christ? Is it derived from 
the beatific vision, or from the hypostatic union? And, in 
the latter case, is it derived from the fact itself of the union, 
or from a special providence due to the Man-God? Does this 
freedom presuppose—not indeed the power of admitting a 
bad act as possible, for that is evidently an imperfection— 
but the power of delaying the doing of a good or indifferent 
act in sensu composito, as it is put, of all the conditions 
requisite for acting? Would the freedom, possessed by the 
blessed in heaven, to make a selection among several possible 
boons—besides the essential one of blessedness—suffice to 
render their actions meritorious, if God had not, by a definite 
arrangement, fixed the time-limit of merit at death? To 
what degree was Jesus at the same time viator and com- 
prehensor? And within what limits were the natural effects 
of the beatific vision neutralized in him in order to allow him 


188 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


to fulfil his role as redeemer? Was the divine command, 
which he obeyed by dying, a precept in the strict sense of the 
word, or the manifestation of a simple desire? And if it was 
a precept, was it absolute or conditional, subordinated to the 
acceptance of the incarnate Word, or anterior to any accept- 
ance? Finally, did it refer to the mere fact of death, or to the 
circumstances of the passion? 

We believe, for our part, that Christ was not only without 
sin, but that he was absolutely exempt from the possibility 
of sin, and this by virtue of the hypostatic union; also that 
the command to die was a genuine precept from the time that 
the incarnate Word had accepted death for our salvation; 
that this acceptance by Christ was really free, and con- 
sequently meritorious; and that it sufficed to render Christ 
obedient unto death, even if it was no longer possible to 
retract it; but we are far from imputing all these theological 
deductions to St Paul. 


II—TuHeE VALUE OF THE REDEEMING DEATH 


1. Subjective or Moral Value. 2. Three Explanations of the Objective 
Value: Redemption, Substitution, Satisfaction. 3. Doctrine of the 
Fathers. 


1. The passion of Christ is a manifestation of justice 
which, in the divine purpose, must be recognized and 
appreciated by men. When the conscience of the sinner is 
blinded, he must have a new revelation of divine sanctity ; 
and this revelation God gives him in the spectacle of the 
Just One bearing the punishment of others’ sins. But if the 
Just One, suffering for the guilty, remained purely passive 
and did not accept with filial submission the role of 
mediator, his suffering would not be a real homage to 
infinite holiness. ‘‘ The satisfaction offergd to divine justice 
by the sacrifice of Christ does not, therefore, consist in his 
death alone, but in his death united with two moral facts 
which accompany it, one of which takes place in the con- 
sciousness of the mediator, the other in the consciousness of 
the believer.’’! Such is the explanation, not so new perhaps 
as they imagine, which certain modern theologians propose to 
us. The danger and error would be in believing that it 
explains all the mystery, or that it exhausts the subject. It 
so little exhausts it that the passion of Christ—always in the 
order of subjective efficacy—can just as properly be re- 
garded as an example of heroic self-abnegation and as an 
incentive to love. 

1 Godet, Comment. sur Pép. aux Romains*, vol. i, p. 370. Ina long note 
(L’Expiation d’aprés Saint Paul, pp. 260-377) Godet refers to Gess (Zur 
Lehre der Verséhnune und der Notwendigkett des Stihnens Christi in Jahr- 
pins deutsche Theol., 1857, 1858, and 1859), whose ideas he professes 
to adopt. 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 189 


The drama of Calvary speaks an eloquent language to 
every noble heart : if Christ died for us, who were nothing to 
him, how much more ought we to live for him, who is every- 
thing to us; and if Christ gave his life for strangers, how 
much more ought we to give ours for our brethren? Jesus, 
in giving himself up for us, wished his example of self- 
abnegation not to be lost ; thereby he counted on triumphing 
over our selfishness, and this is one of the considerations 
which the Apostle emphasizes by saying that the love of 
Christ constrains him and leaves him no rest.* Jesus Christ 
redeems us only by identifying himself with our race, and we 
participate in his redemption only by identifying ourselves 
with him by faith: whence there results the imperative duty 
of imitating his conduct and modelling our own lives after 
his. When St Peter lays down the great principle of the 
imitation of Christ, founded on the example of his passion,” 
he is in perfect accord with St Paul, who loves to present the 
crucified Saviour to neophytes* as a model, whose condition 
of death he himself tries to reproduce,* and whose bleeding 
image he is proud to bear in his body.°® 

That the redeeming death of Christ is valuable for us as an 
example, a lesson, and an encouragement is, therefore, 
perfectly clear. The great mistake of Abelard was to believe 
that it was only that: a manifestation of love, designed to 
produce in us a responsive love. If Abelard’s theory is some- 
times obscure, the confession of faith which was imposed 
upon him, the retractation of his former disciple, Geoffroy de 
Clairvaux, and the refutations of St Bernard and of William 
of St Thierry, clarify and give it precision. Little liked by 
its contemporaries and almost forgotten, it was revived by 
Socinus and his pupils; but his compromising patronage was 
not calculated to recommend it to Protestants, and still less 
to Catholics. It is Ritschl who gave it a certain vogue in 
heterodox circles. The redeeming work of Christ, according 
to this theory, consisted merely in revealing, by his life and, 
above all, his death, the love of the heavenly Father, who is 
so essentially a Father that he is always disposed to pardon 
the sinner. This revelation, by restoring our confidence, 
destroys sin in us, which is only a want of confidence in 
respect to God; so that it justifies and reconciles us; it 
delivers us also from the punishment of sin, for this punish- 
ment is, according to Ritschl, only the perception of our fault 
and the conviction that the evils of life are the just punish- 
ment for it. The majority of Protestant theologians, it must 
be said, reject a theory which is too openly opposed to the 
teaching of St Paul. They confess that Christ’s death has 
for the Apostle an objective value, which results from the 


1 2 Cor. v, 14, 15. See below pes 201-3. aterete ie 
* Phil, ii, 8. « 2 Cor, iv, 10. 5 Gal. vi, 17. 


190 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


redeeming act itself, and which exists apart from any con- 
sideration for us and independently of our knowledge. 


2. Redemption is essentially the destruction of sin. There 
are as many aspects of redemption as there are of sin; if sin 
is a fall, redemption will be an uplifting ; if sin is an infirmity, 
redemption will be a remedy ; if sin is a debt, redemption will 
be its payment; if sin is a fault, redemption will be an expia- 
tion; if sin is a bondage, redemption will be a deliverance ; if 
sin is an offence, redemption will be a satisfaction as regards 
man, a propitiation as regards God, and a mutual reconcilia- 
tion between God and man. It is the restoration of humanity 
by the Word made flesh which Alexandrian speculation, 
guided by apologetical considerations, preferred to consider. 
The incarnation was put in the foreground, and redemption, 
in the strict sense of the word, by the death of Christ, was 
relegated to a second place. It was reiterated that the Word 
became incarnate in order to deify—they even said 
“ wordify ’’—human nature, in order to honour it by his 
presence and to heal it by his contact, and to restore the 
immortality and incorruptibility lost at the time of the 
original sin, as well as to give light to its darkness and to 
dissipate its errors. All this made the benefit of the incarna- 
tion perceptible, but did not tell the reason for the redeem- 
ing death nor the manner of its operation. 

The theories invented to explain the objective value of this 
death may be reduced to three: that of redemption or 
ransom, that of expiation and penal substitution, and that of 
satisfaction. We must briefly present the proofs which 
corroborate them and show, if necessary, their weak points 
and incompetency. 


Theory of redemption or ransom.—The value of Christ’s 
death is quite often expressed in Scripture by a commercial 
metaphor. Paul says that Jesus Christ has acquired us, 
bought us, ransomed us; the price is expressly mentioned : 
it is the blood of the Son of God. Once even, in a passage 
which has its exact parallel in the first two Synoptists, the 
word ransom is mentioned. Moreover, the idea of ransom is 
contained in the etymological meaning of the words to buy 
back and redemption (Avtpove Oat and droAttTpwors from dvtpov). 

In order to appreciate the purport of this concept, we must 
go back to its origin. Israel was the property, the private 
possession of Jehovah; this was a consequence of the Mosaic 
theocracy: ‘‘ Thou shalt be a holy people to the Lord thy 
God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be his peculiar 
people out of all peoples that are upon the earth.’’! God 


* Deut. vii, 6; xiv, 2 ; xxvi, 18 ( ndap DY, Aads zeptovatos). 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 191 


imposed, however, one condition: ‘‘If you will hear my 
voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar 
possession above all people; for all the earth is mine.’’? 


This possession God established by his sovereign right and 
by his voluntary choice : 


‘‘The Lord hath chosen Jacob, 
Israel for his own possession.’’? 


But he had taken pains to assure it to himself; he could 
say by the mouth of Isaias: ‘‘ This people have I formed for 
myself; they shall show forth my praise,’’* and he could 
protest by the voice of Moses and of the Psalmist that he 
possessed it by right of conquest.* Thenceforth it was 
permissible for him to dispose of it at his pleasure; there- 
fore he frequently threatens to give it away and to abandon 
it to its enemies : 5° 


Otherwise the Rock will sell them; 
And the Lord will deliver them up.® 


God applied to his faithless people the lex talionis; he 
abandoned them in proportion as he was himself abandoned. 
It was not a complete, absolute, final abandonment with no 
hope of return, but a partial and temporary one, revocable on 
the day of their repentance. God never renounced the right 
of redeeming his repentant people, made wise through mis- 
fortune. He even bound himself to do this on two grounds: 
one by virtue of the covenant made with the posterity of 
Abraham and with the children of Israel, a covenant which 
obliged him to bring his people out of Egypt—and subse- 
quently from Babylon—to deliver them from their oppressors 
and to preserve them from ruin; the other in his character of 
redeemer, which imposed upon him the task of liberating his 
people which had fallen into servitude, and of avenging them 
on their enemies.” In all these metaphors there is no cause 
for anxiety about the price to be paid, for God is the master ; 


and as the act of abandonment did not confer upon the 
aS ICE. xix, 5. 8 Ps. cxxxiv, 4: 


8 Is. xliii, 21: Aadv pou dv mepterornaduny (*F)1¥). 


« Ex. xv, 16; Ps. lxxiii, 2. Here it is the verb 1), to acquire. 

5 Judges ii, 14; iii, 8; iv, 2,9; x, 7; 1 Sam. xii, 9; Is.1,1; In, 3; Ezech 
XXX. 12. 

® Deut. xxxii, 30. We know that )¥ (rock, refuge) is a name for God. 

7 The word to redeem (Autpotv) appears very often (90 times) in the 
Septuagint and usually has God for subject. It corresponds: (a) to the 


word 5x3 (44 times), “to set at liberty’? in the character of gd’é/ (re- 
demptor, near relative); we know that God was the gé’é/ of his people ;— 
(6) to the word M75 (41 times), ‘‘ to redeem, to deliver, to save ”?;_(c) to 
the word P76 (5 times), “to snatch away,” for example, from a danger.— 
In all these cases, when it is a question of God, the etymological meaning of 
“to deliver in return for the payment of a ransom (Avrpov) ”’ is wholly absent. 


1Q2 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


adversaries of Israel a veritable right of ownership, neither 
does the new act of liberation, which annuls the first contract, 
give them a claim for compensation. 


You were sold for nothing; 
And you shall be redeemed without money. 


Once only the idea of compensation appears: ‘“‘I am the 
Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour; I have 
given Egypt, Ethiopia, and Saba for thy ransom.’’? But 
this solitary allusion, which the historical fact of the 
conquests of the liberator of the Jews explains, makes only 
the more noticeable the number of cases in which the ransom 
and redemption are accomplished without the least mention 
of a compensating payment, and with the evident impossi- 
bility of determining the individual to whom the debt or 
ransom ought to be paid. 

Let us now see what part the ideas of acquisition, purchase, 
redemption, price, and ransom play in the writings of St 
Paul. The texts can be divided into two series: those in 
which price and purchase are spoken of, and those in which 
redemption and ransom are named. In the discourse 
addressed to the Elders of Ephesus, the Apostle says to 
them: Feed ‘‘ the Church of God, which he hath purchased 
with his own blood.’’? This is a clear allusion to the passages 
in the Old Testament which bestowed on Israel the name of 
an “acquired people ’’‘—that is to say, purchased by the 
Lord as his particular possession; only since it is here a 
question of the Church, the price of purchase can only be 
the blood of Christ. The Epistles hardly offer us a wholly 
similar example; yet the assertion, twice repeated, ‘‘ You 
were bought with a [great] price’’> should be regarded as 
parallel, for there is no doubt that the price in question is 
the Saviour’s blood. By virtue of this purchase we become 
the inalienable property of God, and it is no longer per- 
missible for us to subject ourselves to anyone whomsoever. 
Speaking particularly of the Jews, St Paul says again: 
““ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being 


* Is. ii, 3: Gwpeav enpdbnre wai od perd dpyupiov AutpwOncecbe. The 
text is interesting on account of the use ae Aurpody, 

* Is. xliii, 3: "Enotnoa dMaypd cov (D3). 

®* Acts xx, 28: fy meperoujcaro bia rod aluaros rod iSiov. Elsewhere 
(Luke xvii, 33 ; 1 Tim. iii, 13) God is not the subject of zrepirovetaBat. 

* Titus il, 14: ta xadapion €avr@ Aadv Eprodarov (cf. Deut. X1Vjp sis 
Ex. xix, 5); 1 Pet. ii, 9: Aads els mepurolnow (Is. xliv, 20, 21). Compare 
Eph. i, 14: €s dwoAdrpwow tis meptmounaews. 

* 1 Cor. vi, 20; vii, 23 (ripijs jyopdeOnre). The verb ayopalew is used 
in the same metaphorical sense (2 Pet. i, 1; Apoc. v, 9; xiv, g240 It appears 
elsewhere only in the expression “to redeem the time or the occasion”? 
(Eph. v, 16; Col. iv, 4). St Paul, in the two examples below, uses the com- 
pound égayopdleuv. 


THE REDEEMING DEATH - 193 


made a curse for us;’’! and elsewhere: ‘‘ God sent his Son, 
made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might 
redeem them who were under the Law.’’? Thus Jesus Christ, 
as the Jehovah of the old covenant, acquires, purchases, and 
ransoms his people. He gives for them an inestimable price, 
his blood; or, indeed, he assumes a burdensome and 
ignominious mode of life, the observance and curse of the 
Law. But the metaphor is not carried too far, and no one 
intervenes to demand or receive the price. 

St Paul twice gives to the word ‘‘ redemption ’’ an eschato- 
logical meaning: we wait for the ‘‘ redemption of our 
body ’’3—namely, deliverance from the miseries of mortality ; 
and the Holy Spirit has sealed us ‘‘ unto the day of redemp- 
tion,’’* which is that of final liberation and of the complete 
triumph of life over death. Everywhere else redemption is 
connected with the actual work of salvation; it is ‘‘ redemp- 
tion in Christ Jesus,’’ or, what amounts to the same thing, 
‘‘redemption by his blood.’’® The Apostle, no doubt 
alluding to an utterance of the Master, says also that 
‘Jesus Christ hath given himself [as] a redemption for 
all,’’® giving himself up to death. What is the exact purport 
of these statements? In the Old Testament the redemption 
effected by God contains only the idea of deliverance, and 
never suggests the notion of a price to be paid or received. 
With all the more reason must it be so in the New, where 
the word redemption acquires a technical meaning, com- 
plete in itself and including the entire work of our salvation, 
the remission of sins, sanctification, and glorification,’ with- 
out the idea of deliverance being specially indicated in it. 

In any case, the price, mention of which is sometimes 
made, can only be a burdensome condition to be fulfilled by 
the Redeemer. In fact, if it were a question of satisfying or 
indemnifying someone, it would evidently be the one who 
had held us in bondage, and from whom Christ Jesus 
snatches us away. Now, according to St Paul, we were 
slaves of sin, vices, and passions, § and we are delivered from 

OBA REO Teg ee 2 Gal. iv, 5. 

8 Rom. viii, 23. ‘ Eph, iv, 30. 

5 Rom. iii, 24: 1 Cor. i, 30; Eph. i, 7, 14; Col. i, 14. Outside of St Paul, 


Luke xxi, 28 ; Heb. ix, 15 ; xi, 35 ; and for the synonym Avtpwats, Luke i, 68 ; 
ii, 38 ; Heb. ix, 12.—The title of redeemer (Aurpwrs) is given once to Moses 
(Acts vii, 35), never to Jesus Christ. But the verb Aurpoiv, redimere, is 
applied three times to the work of redemption: Tit. ii, 14 (iva Avtpwonrat 
Hpas drd mdons dvoutas); Luke xxiv, 21; 1 Pet. i, 18. 

¢ 1 Tim. ii, 6: 6 d0ds éaurdv dvridutpov brép mavrwv. See p. 197. 

7 Col. i, 14 (€v & Exoper thy drodvtpwow, THY apeow Tav GpapTiav) ; 
1 Cor. i, 30 (Suxatootvn re Kal dyracpes Kat daodvrpwors) ; Rom, viii, 23 
(drexSexdpevor THY drodvTpwow Too odparos jjpadv) ; Eph. iv, 30 (els Nuépav 
dmodutpwcews). Elsewhere (Rom. iii, 24; 1, 14) the word is employed 
absolutely in the general sense of redemption, with no special allusion to a 
deliverance. 

® Rom. vi, 6, 17, 19, 203 vii, 14, 23; Tit. ii, 3 ; ill, 3. 

I. 13 


194 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


all iniquity ;' the Jews are redeemed from the curse of the 
Law ;? the pagans were enslaved to the elements of the 
world, God had delivered them over to their impure desires. ? 
Will it be said that the price of redemption is paid to sin, to 
iniquity, and to carnal passions? The devil never appears in 
this business ; and with all the more reason is the grotesque 
conception of a bargain struck with the devil, whom a fair 
compensation would succeed in buying off, totally absent 
from the writings of St Paul. If we wish to push the 
metaphor to the extreme limit, it is to God himself that the 
price of our ransom would be paid; for it is God whom 
the work of redemption appeases and renders propitious, and 
it is in relation to God alone that Christ ‘‘ propitiates.’’ The 
Saviour is our ransom (Avrpov), and it is well known that, in 
the Mosaic code, this word “denotes the tax or the sacrifice 
required by God for the ransom of the firstborn. But once 
again, nothing allows us to assert that the metaphor should 
be pushed so far. 

In the times when ideas of purchase, price, and ransom 
were operative, the temptation was great to change the 
metaphor into an allegory and to complete the similitude by 
making up for the silence of the sacred authors. Several 
Fathers did not resist it, and there escaped from them some 
unfortunate expressions which have drawn down upon them 
the anathemas of our modern historians of dogma. The facts 
hardly justify these virulent diatribes. The burlesque theory 
of the devil’s right to us was never common in the Church; 
and they ought not to be called theories, but rather fugitive 
allusions or oratorical amplifications, quickly corrected by 
explanations of flawless accuracy. If we put aside St Justin 
and St Ireneus, wrongly accused, since they confine them- 
selves to paraphrasing the utterances of the Apostles, and if 
we eliminate from Origen, St Basil, and St Jerome some 
offensive lines, there remain only the well-known and too 
much expounded passages of St Ambrose and St Gregory of 
Nyssa. It is in two letters only that St Ambrose carries the 
allegory to the extreme by affirming that the price of ransom 
was paid by Jesus Christ to the devil himself and that man, 
having sold himself to Satan, was an insolvent debtor; a 
prisoner for debts for whom it was necessary for Christ to 
pay, and thus to destroy the authentic document upon which 
man’s indebtedness was inscribed. To whom, therefore, did 
Christ pay the price of his blood? To the infernal creditor : 
the Bishop of Milan does not recoil from this horrible con- 


? Titus ii, 14. ZoGal. ial? sive is. 1 ROM a 24s c0. ome 
* The word Avrpov in the Septuagint corresponds seven times to }*7B, 


six times to 195, five times to nba or words of the same root, and once to 
“M1. Now the first of these words signifies the compensation given to God 
for the firstborn, Num. xviii, 15 (Avrpois AutpwOhcerar 7a T™pwTdToKa.). 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 195 


clusion, and St Gregory of Nyssa reaches the same point by 
another road. The redemption of the human race must safe- 
guard all the attributes of God: justice, as well as wisdom 
and goodness. Now since we had been delivered over to the 
devil by a document well and correctly drawn, we were his 
property, and he would not consent to abandon his claim to 
us without fair compensation. He thought he had found this 
compensation in the death of the Saviour, but perceived too 
late that he had made a bad bargain; for man remained 
none the less beyond his attacks and demands. In order not 
to judge these juridical negotiations and this strange 
haggling too severely, we must remember that the saintly 
teacher is addressing his remarks to unbelieving readers, and 
that he is not expounding nor even speaking of theology in 
the strict sense of the word, but arguing apologetically, and 
let us add, if we must, badly. However, his example teaches 
us how dangerous it is, in these delicate matters, to venture 
‘* beyond what is written.’’ 


Theory of penal substitution.—There are many theologians 
who discover at the foundation of every sacrifice the idea of 
substitution. Sacrifice, it is said, has essentially for its aim 
to recognize the sovereign right of God to what is his, and 
also the unworthiness of man in his present fallen state. 
Under these conditions, the religious instinct suggests to the 
guilty man, conscious of his faults and of the punishment 
which they deserve, the thought of substituting for himself 
an innocent victim among the animals most necessary to his 
subsistence. If such a sentiment is difficult to discover 
among primitive peoples, where the sacrifice often assumes a 
joyous character, it is thought possible at least to establish 
its existence among the Israelites, who received it by revela- 
tion. The ritual common to sacrifices for sin seems to 
indicate this substitution quite clearly; the victim must be 
immaculate ; the priest who sacrifices it lays his hands upon 
it to signify the transfer of the fault; it is killed instead of 
the criminal; its blood, shed before God, and its body con- 
sumed by the flames, complete the symbolism of the expia- 
tion. In support of this the following text from Leviticus is 
quoted : ‘‘ The life of living beings is in the blood; and I have 
given it you for the altar to make propitiation for you; for it 
is the blood that maketh propitiation because it is the life.’’? 
Blood must be abstained from because life is in the blood; 


1 xvii, 11, trans by Reuss, L’Arstoire sainte et la Jot, vol. i, Paris, 1879, 
p. 150. Reuss avoids the literal translation (the soul of the flesh) because it 
gives a false meaning in French, the sou/ hardly signifying life, nor flesh 
living beings. He adds the three following reflections: “ Literally, of the 
flesh, an expression which includes men and animals It will be remarked 
that the principle of animal life is located in the blood, as elsewhere in the 
breath (Gen. ii, 7); it is not at all a question of what we call the sou/ in a 


196 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


life ceases with the blood and passes away when the blood 
flows from the body; this fact of experience is sufficient to 
cause the blood to be considered as the vehicle of life, as the 
very life. Now the life of animals belongs to God only; he 
reserves it for himself and grants the use of it to man only in 
view of sacrifice. To offer the blood is to offer the life, and 
God accepts it on the altar, but only as a means of expiation 
or propitiation: the Hebrew word kipper signifies both. 

This ingenious theory raises many objections. How is it, 
for example, to be applied to peace-offerings, to votive 
sacrifices and to sacrifices of thanksgiving? Even if re- 
stricted to the sacrifice for sin, it encounters serious diffi- 
culties. The Mosaic Law did not admit sacrifices for 
transgressions which merited death. The sacrifice consisted 
less in the immolation itself, which a layman sometimes per- 
formed, than in the manipulation of the blood, which was 
reserved for the priest only. Has it ever been proved that 
the laying on of hands, which is susceptible of such varied 
symbolism, signified precisely the transfer of the guilt? And 
if it did signify that, why did the victim, instead of being 
defiled, become so holy that only the priests partook of it? A 
bloody death is absent precisely in the ceremony of the scape- 
goat, in which the idea of substitution is most obvious and in 
which, as might be expected, the animal which is sym- 
bolically laden with the sins of the peoples becomes impure 
and accursed. 

Moreover, the theory of penal substitution, when isolated 
and exaggerated, presents grave dangers. It tends to estab- 
lish a repugnant conflict between the justice and the love of 
God on one side and between his anger and mercy on the 
other. God persecutes a God; he’ proceeds against him with 
all the apparatus of justice ; he regards him as an enemy and 
as one who deserves all his vengeance; he declares open war 
upon him; he delivers him over, as a victim, to the fury of 
his irritated justice and inflicts upon him in a certain way the 
punishment of the damned. How much better than these 
oratorical figures and exaggerated metaphors, the hyperbole 
of which must be reduced, is the simple doctrine of St 
Thomas that God gave up his Son by decreeing his death for 
the salvation of the world, by inspiring him with the willing- 
ness to die for us, and by not protecting him against his 
enemies. 

It is said that the innocent is punished for the guilty ; but 
this is not exact nor even intelligible. Punishment cannot be 
transferred from one person to another without changing its 
ESE i seal is) Ne ly led POON TER hol 
philosophical or psychological sense.—There is a use for the blood, but it is 
intended not for nourishment but for sacrifice.—The author has in mind 


the expiatory sacrifice ; the life of the animal is given to God in compensation 
for the life of sinful man.” 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 197 


nature. A debt can indeed be paid by an intermediary, but a 
punishment cannot be undergone by proxy. Punishment is 
essentially a personal thing, inseparable from the sin; if it 
falls upon a stranger, it is no longer a punishment. If the 
law of nations has sometimes allowed the fault of one of their 
members to be imputed to a family, a city, or a nation, it is 
because the family, city, or nation were considered as moral 
entities ; it is not by virtue of the principle of penal substitu- 
tion, but by virtue of the wholly different principle of 
solidarity. 

If we suppose that St Paul really had in mind the theory of 
substitution, how comes it that he never formulated it? 
Why does he always say that Christ was crucified for us 
(irép, and exceptionally epi), for all men, for sinners,’ that 
he went to death for us,? that he was made a curse for us,°® 
that he was made sin for us,‘ and that he gave himself up 
for our sins;> and why does he never say that Christ died in 
our place (dvri),® which logically would dispense us from 
dying? No doubt what one person does for another is often 
done in his stead; it is what he ought to have done, and 
makes up for his lack of ability, and therefore is somehow 
done by way of substitution; but it does not follow that the 
two expressions have the same meaning. In the New Testa- 
ment not a single example of this equivalence is quoted, and 
even if to die for men can be understood, in the last analysis, 
as being a substitution of the innocent for the guilty, can “ to 
die for their sins’’ be interpreted in the same way? Is this 
not a clear proof that the idea of substitution does not convey 
the whole thought of the Apostle, and that it must be 
corrected or completed by a notion of another kind? 

Ever since the principle of penal substitution has been 


1 Rom.v, 6, 7, 8; xiv, 15; 1 Cor. i, 13 ; 2 Cor. v, 15; 1 Thess. v, 10 (rept). 

* Rom. viii, 32 ; 1 Cor. xi, 24; ii, 20; 1 Tim. ii, 6; Tit. lipid: 

® Gal. ili, 13. 40a Cory) 2i- 

§ Gal. i, 4; 1 Cor. xv, 3; cf. Rom. viii, 3. 

* St Paul changes the /ogion (Matt. xx, 28; Mark. x, 45: Sodvat thy 
yuynv abrod Avrpov dvri 7oAAdv) in a way which seems intentional (1 Tim. 
ii, 6: 6 Sods €auréy dvridutpoy vnép mdvrwv). In the new version the idea 
of substitution is so attenuated that it almost disappears; for dvriAurpov 
(like dvriptoOia, Rom. i, 27; 2 Cor. vi, 13 for picbes, and davrddayxa, 
Mark viii, 37 ; Matt. xvi, 26 for dAAayya) does hardly more than strengthen 
the meaning of Avrpov and does not indicate the exchange of this ransom for 
the persons liberated. The relation with the interested parties is expressed 
as usual by trép. After this, it is superfluous to inquire whether t7zép is not 
sometimes equivalent to dvri. Let us note, however, that the two examples 
cited in Thayer’s dictionary (4th edit. sub voce) are not very reliable. In fact, 
we know that baptism for (uép, 1 Cor. xv, 29) the dead was conferred by the 
Corinthians 1” favour of the dead, but we do not in the least know whether 
in was in their place. As to Philem. 13, it may be granted that dep aod is 
almost equivalent to dvi ood, but many authors (Vincent, Haupt, St John 
Parry, etc.) dispute it, precisely because this is contrary to Paul’s usage. 
See, however, Lightfoot on this last passage and on Col. i, 7: mords Umép 
tuav (or brép jydv) dtaxovos. 


198 THE "THEOLOGY (OFS ST IEAUL 


applied, there has been a temptation to exaggerate it. This 
is what a great number of Protestant theologians did, 
especially in Lutheranism. They maintained that Christ had 
suffered identically the punishment due for sin: death, the 
divine curse, and damnation itself. Thus Jesus suffered the 
anguish of hell in Gethsemani, when his soul was oppressed 
with a deadly sadness ; he suffered the tortures of the damned 
on Calvary, when he uttered that cry of agony: ‘‘ My God, 
why hast thou forsaken me?’’ He suffered all, this also, not 
extensively, according to duration of time, but intensively, 
essentially. This line of thought has been generally 
abandoned ; but these absurd consequences have thrown upon 
the theory of penal substitution an amount of discredit which 
it is far from overcoming. | 

Theory of satisfaction.—In his famous Cur Deus homo, St 
Anselm reasons thus: Sin is an offence against God; but the 
wisdom and the holiness of the Most High cannot let an 
offence against his honour go unpurtished. The sinner re- 
mains, therefore, a debtor to divine justice, until the offence 
has been atoned for. Now, no created being, whether man or 
angel, can restore to God the outward glory which sin takes 
from him; for the act of every finite being is by its nature 
finite, while sin, by attacking God, acquires on account of 
this fact an infinite wickedness. Therefore, one of two things 
is true: either sinful man was irremediably lost, or it was 
necessary that a God-Man should come to his aid. But it is 
repugnant’ to divine goodness to abandon its plans of love 
and mercy. Hence we see the moral necessity for the 
incarnation of the Word, in order to offer to God, in the 
name of guilty humanity, a satisfaction equal to the offence. 
By virtue of the hypostatic union, the divine person confers 
upon the acts of his human nature an infinite value, and the 
redeeming death, voluntarily accepted by Jesus, as a supreme 
proof of filial obedience, for the purpose of restoring the 
honour of God, restores it with interest. 

This dialectical arrangement, the power and harmony of 
which no one will fail to recognize, may be criticized as 
pertaining too much to the spheres of pure speculation. 
Pushed to its ultimate consequences, it would end in 
philosophic optimism and the absolute necessity of the 
incarnation. Yet the author of Cur Deus homo was able to 
steer clear of the difficulties and his interpretation of the 
redeeming death marks a real progress. Let us add that it 
finds a solid foundation in Paul. It is indisputable that God, 
in the actual plan of salvation, had in view the display of his 
wisdom and justice. It*will be said that it is a question here 
of justifying justice; but justifying justice is only one particu- 
lar aspect of the divine attribute of justice ; it is justice which, 
having inflicted upon sin the treatment which it deserves, 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 199 


spares the sinner who is united to Jesus by faith. The blood 
of Christ is a ‘‘ means of propitiation’’ (‘Aacripiov). 
Whether the propitiation is a direct effect of the redeeming 
death or whether it springs directly from the expiation pro- 
duced by the sacrifice of the cross, the result is the same; in 
either way, the blood of Christ atones for the offence against 
God and renders him propitious to us. It effects also a 
reconciliation and puts an end to the mutual hatred which 
formerly existed between sinful man and an outraged God; 
and this reconciliation presupposes that the wrongs against 
God no longer exist; in other words, that God has received 
satisfaction for the offences committed against him. 

The theory of satisfaction completes and corrects to a great 
degree that of penal substitution. Considering sin no longer 
as a debt to be paid or a punishment to be undergone, but 
rather as an injury to be repaired, it renders superfluous the 
material proportionality between sin and its expiation; a 
moral proportion is sufficient, which results superabundantly 
from the value conferred upon the acts of Christ’s human 
nature through his divine personality. It explains, more- 
over, the necessity of uniting the active obedience of the 
Redeemer with his passive obedience; for the reparation of 
an offence can be made only by a free and conscious act. 
Nevertheless, as it is generally presented, it is open to serious 
objections. It presupposes in the first place that every sin 
must necessarily be punished or atoned for: Necesse est ut 
omne peccatum satisfactio aut poena sequatur is the maxim 
repeated several times by St Anselm. Now sin can be 
forgiven and also remitted even after an inadequate repara- 
tion. This is not the case in the present order of things, for 
the satisfaction of Christ is more than sufficient, but it might 
be the case; and then the theory, which is based upon 
philosophic speculation and not upon the positive facts of 
revelation, would bé defective. In the second place merit 
cannot be transferred any more than punishment can. If a 
family is honoured or recompensed out of consideration for 
one of its members, it is because it forms a moral unity, and 
because its members are not strangers to one another. 
Similarly the atonement for an offence can be effected only 
by the offender in person or by someone who forms with him 
morally one and the same person. On any hypothesis, we 
emerge from the principle of substitution to enter that of 
solidarity, the only one that gives us the key to the Pauline 
doctrine. There is, therefore, room for further improvements 
in this matter, and the final word is not spoken. 


3. It is not, however, in the writings of the Fathers that 
we must seek it. They have been often wrongly accused of 
giving too little prominence to this fundamental dogma, for 


200 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


in their writings are found as many allusions to the work of 
redemption as to any other article of faith, perhaps even 
more. But various circumstances explain their reticence. In 
the first centuries no heresy ever directly attacked the dogma 
of redemption ; hence the Fathers were not obliged to defend 
it, and they limited themselves in general to repeating the 
traditional formulas without troubling themselves about 
harmonizing them or investigating their profound meaning. 

Given the public which they addressed and the plan which 
they proposed to follow, the apostolic Fathers and the 
apologists had hardly any need to speak of the redeeming 
death. Later, when confronted by sceptical pagans, the chief 
problem was: Why had a God become man? Several, 
following the example of Origen in his refutation of Celsus, 
thought they could make the mystery of an incarnate God 
more intelligible by proving the necessity of redemption. 
Such is also the dominant idea of the first works in which 
redemption is treated in a learned manner. St Athanasius 
entitles his work De incarnatione Verbi; if he insists far too 
much, to suit us, on physical redemption—that is to say, on 
the restoration of human nature by the union of the Word 
with our flesh—his aim, and his readers as well, forced this 
plan upon him. The apologetical aims of St Gregory of 
Nyssa, in his Great Catechesis, are not less marked. We 
do not hesitate to confess that in this he makes a bad use 
of medical comparisons, and takes an excessive amount of 
pleasure in describing medicinal methods employed to heal 
mankind; but the Catholic doctrine of salvation by the 
cross of Jesus is neither forgotten nor concealed ; it is made 
secondary in prominence, that is all. ‘‘ Our nature was 
ill,’’ says St Gregory, ‘‘ and had need of a physician; fallen 
man waited for a helping hand to lift him up; fatally stricken, 
it was necessary for someone to restore him to life; having 
gone astray in the paths of evil, he called for a guide to lead 
him to the good ; imprisoned in darkness, he yearned for the 
light. The captive needed a redeemer; the prisoner a helper ; 
the slave a liberator.’’ All this tends to prove the expediency 
of the incarnation, but throws only a faint light on the nature 
of the work of redemption itself. 


III—DocTRINAL SYNTHESIS 


1. The Great Principle of Solidarity. 2. Soteriological Value of the Resur- 
rection of Christ. 3. Unity and Harmony of Paul’s Doctrine. 


1. The preceding pages have shown how many and varied 
are the aspects of redemption. All these viewpoints are to 
a certain degree just, and all should be presented, yet they 
can be presented only one after another; moreover, all of 
them are incomplete, and it is because they have been 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 201 


isolated, one being exaggerated to the detriment of the other, 
that contradictory systems have been imagined, all insuffi- 
cient in their narrowness and, above all, false by their ex- 
clusiveness. Each of them represents a part of the truth, 
but not the whole truth. 

The theory of ransom is right, for sin really made us 
debtors to God, and we were unable to pay our debt; but it 
is not a stranger who pays it for us; it is the human race 
itself which discharges it through its representative, Jesus 
Christ. The theory of substitution is right, for Christ has 
endured for us a punishment which he did not deserve; but 
the substitution is incomplete, since he who expiates our 
faults is the Head of our family, and thus we expiate them 
in him and by him. The theory of satisfaction is right, but 
only if it is not based exclusively upon a substitution of 
persons, for an offence is really washed away only if the 
offender takes part in the reparation as he took part in the 
offence. Thus, whichever road is taken, unless indeed we 
halt on the way, we always end by coming to the principle 
of solidarity. 

This illuminating principle was not only perceived but 
clearly formulated by the Fathers of the Church. All of them 
say in about the same words that Jesus Christ had to become 
what we are, in order to make us become what he is; that 
he became incarnate in order that the deliverance should be 
accomplished by a man, as the fall had been accomplished by 
a man; that Christ, as redeemer, comprises and summarizes 
all humanity; and that God wished to restore our nature by 
itself and by its own resources, by means of the Incarnate 
Word. Several of them, far from failing to recognize the 
principle of solidarity, exaggerated its application. Modern 
theologians also will enter more and more into this category 
of ideas; Catholics, in order to find in it a necessary com- 
plement to the doctrine of satisfaction; Protestants, in order 
to obtain a no less necessary corrective for the theory of 
substitution, the terminology of which they religiously retain. 
It is a happy sign; we are advancing by degrees towards a 
conception of the redemptive death, which puts a stop to 
many difficulties and will end by rallying into one group all 
those who concede an objective value to the redemption. We 
shall see that it interprets the Apostle’s thought correctly. 


The charity of Christ presseth us: judging this, that if One died for 
all, then all died ; and that One died for all, that they also who live may 
not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose 
again.} 

le a a a SE eT 
1 2Cor.v.14,15:‘H yap ayday rob 14. Charttas enim Christt urge 
Xpworod ouvéxer yas Kpivavras Tobro Sts nos. aestimantes hoc, quoniam 
(A) els dep mdvtwv améBavev: dpa (A) st unus pro omnibus mortuus 
ot mavres améBavov: est, ergo omnes mortut sunt ; 


202 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The theory of penal substitution would force us to con- 
clude: If one died for all, then all have no more to die. 
St Paul reaches the very opposite conclusion: ‘‘ If one died 
for all, then all died’’ ideally and mystically in him and with 
him. This is because he starts from the principle of solidarity 
which makes the death of Christ our death and the life of 
Christ our life. Instead of writing ‘One died in the place 
(av7c) of all,’’ he writes, perhaps intentionally : ‘‘ One died in 
favour and to the profit (v7ép) of all.” 

The commentators who, carried away by St Augustine’s 
authority, understand by this death original sin, fall into 
inextricable difficulties. Their explanation is refuted by 
grammar, for Paul does not say, ‘‘ If one died for all, then 
all were dead” before him, but “If one died for all, then all 
died ’’ simultaneously and by that very fact. Moreover, what 
would the mention of original sin have to do here, even sup- 
posing that the original sin, with no other qualification, can 
be called death? How would the recollection of original sin 





(B) kat drép ravtwv anébavev va ot 15. (B) e¢ pro omnibus mortuus est 
Cavres pnxérte éavtois Cow aAkd rh Christus: ut, et quit vivunt, jam non 
Urep avT&v arobavdvre Kal éyepbevre. sthi vivant, sed et, quit pro ipsts 


mortuus est et resurrextit. 


Differences between the Vulgate and the original text.—(a) The guoniam 
which seems causative (because) must be understood as 67 (considering this, 
that).—(b) The Latin conditional ss is found also in many Greek manu- 
scripts. But whether ef has been omitted by the copyists before efs or added 
in order to render the phrase more flexible does not affect the meaning at all ; 
in the one case, we have a conditional proposition (tf one died for all, then all 
died) ; in the other case, we have an argument with only one proposition (One 
died for all, therefore all died); the result is the same.—(c) The words 
mortuus est, mortut sunt, which appear to be a past indefinite or even a present, 
if we take mortuus and mortut as adjectives, do not render very well the 
aorist aéBavev, aéGavov (died, singular and plural).—(¢) The word Christus, 
added to verse 15, does not change the sense at all, but suggests the idea of an 
argument, which does not exist here.—(e) The present participle, aestimantes, 
in place of the aorist xpivavras, has no influence on the thought.—(/) On the 
contrary, the addition of e¢ (in et gut vivunt) makes the phrase obscure. 

Stgnification of some terms.—{a) Nearly everyone is agreed that the love 
of Christ designates here the love which Christ has for us. The context 
requires it, although one thinks of the rule that a personal genitive after 
ayarn is always a subjective genitive, and never an objective genitive-—(4) The 
word ovvéye: signifies uzget and cohtbet. It can keep this double meaning 
quite consistently. Chrysostom translates: Jeaves me no rest (od ddinas 
novxalew pe); Theodoret: inflames us (muproAovueba) ; the exact meaning 
seems to be: possesses us unreservedly, dominates us and urges us, animates 
us and keeps us from thinking of ourselves.—(c) The words xpivavtas rodro ért 
mean: having considered thts (namely) that. For this meaning of xpivew 
cf. 1 Cor. x, 15; xi, 13. For the expression toro drt, cf. Rom. ii, 3; vi, 6; 
2 Cor. x, 7, 11; Eph. v, 5.—In this way, rodro rt includes the two following 
considerations united by the copulative conjunction (xaé) after which érs 
must be understood. 

Doctrinal tmport of the text.—The love which Christ feels for us inflames 
the devotion and self-abnegation of the Apostle, because it suggests two 
reflections : (A) First consideration ; ‘One died for all, hence all died.” 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 203 


8 


stimulate the self-abnegation of the apostles? On the con- 
trary, it is easy to understand that the mystical death with 
Jesus Christ makes it obligatory for us to live in him and to 
model our sentiments on his. Finally, the exegesis of Augus- 
tine has for its point of departure an error of fact suggested 
by the Latin version. In the words et pro omnibus mortuus 
est Christus the conjunction et, owing to the interpolation of 
the word Christus, has the appearance of resuming the un- 
finished argument. Now this is not the case: the reasoning 
is complete in the first phrase, and the copulative merely 
introduces a second consideration well fitted to support the 
Apostle in the way of abnegation. Thus the whole text 
awakens, not the idea of substitution, but that of solidarity. 
For, in order that Jesus may associate us with his death, it 
is essential that we should be wholly one with him at the 
moment when he dies for us. No doubt we are associated 


See eee eee 


The explanation of some old theologians (Theodoret, Ambrosiaster, etc.), 
“therefore all had to die a physical death,” is as contrary to logic as to 
grammar here. That of St Augustine (Contra Julzan., vi, 4; De peccat. 
merit. et remtss.,i, 27 ; De civit. Det, xx, 6, etc.) followed by many scholastic 
commentators, ‘“ therefore all were spiritually dead through sin,” is no more 
admissible than the other, for there would be needed, not the aorist (azréBavov) 
but the pluperfect ; moreover, this consideration does not agree at all with the 
context or with the evident object of St Paul, as Estius has very well remarked: 
Hic commentarius ... etst veram sententiam contineat, non admodum 
guadrat Apostolt instituto, nec connect factle potest cum 11s quae sequuntur. 
If the death of all is neither a physical nor a spiritual death (the death of sin), 
it is then either a moral death or a mystical death. Almost all the modern 
exegetes declare their adherence to one or the other of these two deaths. 
St Thomas proposes three meanings : (2) spiritual death, as St Augustine, 
(6) mystical death (ut omnes mortut dicantur vetert vitae, nec significetur 
quid sit sed quid esse debeat), (c) moral death (ta quisque debet reputare ac st 
mortuus esset sibi tpst). He regards the last sense, which is that of the 
gloss, as more literal. Nevertheless, the commentators, and with reason, 
generally prefer the second. In fact, this is not an exhortation, but the 
presentation of a fact ; or at least the exhortation is indirect and originates, 
as a consequence, from the fact itself. It is a question, therefore, of the 
mystical death of all men, which ideally took place on Calvary in the physical 
death of Jesus Christ, their common representative, and which really took 
place for each'of them at baptism, in the act of their incorporation with Christ. 
Bengel expresses this with his usual conciseness : Mors facta in morte Christs. 
Bisping explains it well: Wirklich und wahrhaft sind wir in Christt Tode 
mitgestorben umd miterstanden. .. . Deutlich wird hier, wte tn so vielen 
paulinischen Stellen, der Tod Christi als e1n stellvertretender bezeichnet. 
So also Plummer (in Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges): “The 
principle assumed is that of representation. In one sense all died in Adam 
(1 Cor. xv, 22), in quite another, all died in Christ.” —(B) The second con- 
sideration draws its consequence from the first, a consequence formally wished 
for by the dying Christ: “ He died for all, #2 order that all who live may not 
ive for themselves but for him who died and rose again for them.” 

To sum it all up, the Apostle considers that he no longer belongs to himself, 
but that he owes himself entirely to the service of Jesus Christ and his brethren, 
because, firstly, he has died a mystical death with the dying Christ, and 
secondly, this mystical death implies and demands a mora/ death to himself 
and to his selfishness. 


204 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


with the dying Christ only in an ideal way, as our repre- 
sentative, but his death is realized in us mystically through 
faith and baptism, and St Paul has accustomed us to this 
language: “As in Adam all die ’—ideally in Eden by the very 
act of disobedience, and subsequently really, by the fact of 
natural generation—“ so shall all be made alive in Christ ”— 
ideally and potentially on Calvary, and really and actually by 
the fact of supernatural regeneration. 

It is still the principle of solidarity which is set forth in 
another passage of astonishing boldness: ‘“‘ Him, who knew 
no sin, he (God) hath made sin for us: that we might be 
made the justice of God in him.” 

The Apostle has just said: “ For Christ we beseech you, 
be reconciled to God.” He hastens to add that this recon- 
ciliation is possible and easy, because God has taken the 
initiative and prepared the ways. The thought assumes, 
therefore, this paradoxical turn: By a sublime condescension 
on the part of God, the Just One becomes sin, in order that 
sinners may become justice. Here again there is, properly 
speaking, no substitution of persons, but solidarity of action. 
Sin is not transferred from men to Christ, but it proceeds from 
men to embrace Christ as the representative of human nature, 
just as the justice of God is not transferred from Christ to 
men, but proceeds from Christ to embrace men, when the 
latter, by filial adoption, are clothed with the divine nature. 
This idea is more clearly expressed in the second sentence, 
for we become the justice of God only in Christ; that is to 
say, only in so far as we are united with him; but the two 
parts of the phrase are parallel and are intended mutually to 
explain each other. The Apostle, in using the general terms 
“sin” and “justice,” does not employ exactly the abstract 
for the concrete, which would not be suitable here; he means 
to express a collective idea. Jesus Christ, as the Head of 
the human race, whose cause he represents and whose 


* 2Cor.v,21: Tov yn yvovra dpap- Lum, qui non noverat peccatum, 
Tiavy tmép hudv duaptiav émoinoev, pro nobis peccatum fectt, ut nos 
iva. nyeis yerduela Sixatoovvn Bos efficeremur justitia Det in ipso. 
€V QuT®. 

It is certain that the negative py (instead of od) expresses a subjective 
sentiment either on the part of the writer, or (much more probably) on the 
part of God himself who treated Jesus thus, although he knew him to be 
without sin, or om account of that. 

It is likewise certain that dwapria cannot here signifiy “ sacrifice for sin.” 
This rendering, unknown to the authors of the New Testament and foreign 
to the language of the Septuagint (except perhaps Lev. vi, 18), would not 
have been understood by the Corinthians. Moreover, it does not harmonize 
with the context. Jesus Christ must become “sin” for us, as we become 
“justice”? in him. This is what almost all the modern exegetes have clearly 
seen; hence they generally abandon the explanation of Ambrosiaster, 
Pelagius, and St Augustine (Enchirid., 41; contra Maximin., i, 2, etc.), who 
has as usual drawn after him a large number of Latin commentators and even 
some Protestant exegetes (Ewald, Ritschl, etc.). 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 


205 


interests he includes, personifies sin; he is made “sin for 
-us,” not in our place, but for our advantage; for, by making 
himself a joint partaker of our fate, he associates us with his 
destiny ; thus, being made sin for us, he causes us to be made 
the justice of God in him. Jesus is neither a sinner nor sin, 
personally, but as a member of a sinful family, with which he 


identifies himself. 


It is in the same sense that he is made a 
“course,” like a branch of an accursed tree. 


Similarly, on 


account of our union with him who is justice itself, we par- 


ticipate in his “justice.” 


Jesus, being by his nature im- 


peccable, cannot be made a sinner by his contact with sinners, 
while our moral union with the Just One par excellence 


renders us really just ourselves. 


And this justice, because it 


comes from grace and not from us, is rightly called the 


“justice of God.” 


The same order of ideas, or nearly so, prevails in the 
following passage from the Epistle to the Galatians : 


Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse 
for us (for it is written : Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree), that 


the blessing of Abraham 


might come on the Gentiles through Christ 


Jesus ; that we may receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.’ 


St Paul has just said that all those who are dependent on 
the works of the Law, and who put their hope exclusively in 


it, are under its curse. 


+ Galil; 13,14: 

13. Xpiords tas efnyopacev ex Tis 
KaTdpas Tod vopou yevduevos Unép 
npav KaTdpa, Ort yéypanTat emtKaTa- 
patos mas 6 Kpepdpevos eri EvAov, 

14. Wa eis Ta EOvn W edAoyia Tob 
Appadp yéevntar ev ‘Troi Xptor@, 
va tiv émayyediay rob ITIvévparos 
AdBwpev bia mloTews. 


In fact, the Law curses all its trans- 


13. Christus nos redemtt de malee 
dicto legis, factus pro nobis male- 
dictum: quia scriptum est: Males 
dictus omnis quit pendet in ligno: 

14. ut in Gentibus  benedtctio 
Abrahae fieret in Christo Jesu, ut 
pollicitationem Spiritus acciptamys 
per fidem. 


(A) The sequence of ideas.—All those who put their hope in the works of 


the Mosaic Law (6c0t e€€ 


Epywv vépov eiciv) are under a curse, for the Law 


pronounces the curse upon whoever violates one of its precepts (verse 10) ; 


on the other 
faith that justifies (verse 11), 


faith, but on the principle of works (verse 12). 


hand, it cannot remove this curse by justifying man, since it is 
and the law is not 


based on the principle of 
There is here a complete syllo- 


gism, in which the conclusion is put first, and St Thomas rearranges it thus : 


Justitita est ex fide ; sed Lex ex fide non est ; : 
a parenthesis designed to prove that the 
curse which it}has pronounced. Verse 13 


—vVerses 11 and 12 form, therefore, 
Law is powerless to revoke the 


ergo Lex justificare non potest. 


is thus connected with verse 10 without any grammatical link : “‘ The Law has 


cursed us ; 
refers to the Jews only. 


and only those can violate it who are legally subjected to it. 
formally put in contrast to the Genteles ; hence 
It is the Jews only, then, who are cursed by the 


following verse, the us is 
it cannot include them. 


Christ delivers us from this curse.’’—It is to be noted that jas 
In fact, the Law curses only those who violate it, 


Moreover, in the 


Law and who are delivered by Christ from this curse ; but their deliverance 
has for its result to open to the Gentiles the source of blessings. 

(B) The twofold curse.—The curse pronounced by the Law against its trans- 
gressors is one thing, the curse whose object is the executed criminal is quite 


206 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


gressors and gives them no means of escape from the male- 
diction which it pronounces. It was necessary, therefore, 
that Christ should come to remove this curse, for it is incom- 
patible with the blessing, of which their father Abraham 
constituted them presumptive heirs, and by which the Gentiles 
will profit only after the Jews are fit to receive it. How will 
the Saviour proceed to do this? 

In order to save men, he took their sin on himself, or, 
rather, entered into communion with their sinful nature; 
similarly, to save the Jews—and the Gentiles after the Jews— 
he takes their curse upon himself, or, rather, makes himself 
a participant of their curse. The curse which weighs upon 
him is, however, very different from that which weighs upon 
the Jews. Both are pronounced by the Law, but the latter is 


ee ee eee 
another. Against its transgressors the Law (Deut. xXvil, 26) pronounces a curse 
which falls upon a// those who are subject to the Law and who have no other 
source of help than the Law ; for according to the doctrine enunciated elsewhere 
by the Apostle (Rom. iii, 20; iv, 15), the Law by itself is a light, but not a 
force ; it enlightens but does not sustain : Maledictus omnis gui, non perman- 
sertt in omnibus. The words omnes, omntbus, added in the Septuagint, are 
not found in the Hebrew text, but are implicitly contained in the universal 
proposition and are required by the Apostle’s argument.—Very different is 
the other curse. The death of the cross was not customary among the Jews, 
but the corpse of one condemned to death was suspended from a gibbet. 
It was an aggravation of the penalty, and above all a spectacle tending to 
inspire terror. The corpse had to be taken down and buried the same 
day for the following reason (Deut. xxi, 21): DON nddp-rp Det Ort 
KexaTnpowevos Und Geob mas Kpeuduevos emi EvAov. St Paul quotes the 
text freely, according to the Septuagint : €mkatdparos mas 6 Kpeudpevos 
emit é¥Aov. He keeps the addition ém gvAov, which is a just commentary 
and which applies perfectly to Jesus crucified. He keeps also the mas, 
implicitly contained in the general proposition of the Hebrew text. He 
changes xexarnpayévos to émtxardparos, in order to make the parallelism 
between the two curses closer. He leaves out tnd @e08, which would not 
be applicable to Christ, or would be so only if explained. In this way there 
is one curse (xardpa) which rests upon the Jews, and another curse (xaTapa) 
which rests upon Jesus; but the curse of the Jews consists in the fact that, 
having violated the Law, they find themselves cursed by the Law (Deut. xxvii, 
26: émtxardpatos; in Hebrew, AIK) and consequently under the penalty 
of the curse (bm xardpay edotv, Gal. iii, 10) ; the curse of Jesus consists in the 
fact that, although innocent, he finds himself in a condition which the Law 
declares accursed. 

(C) Lnadeguate explanations (a) That of Hilgenfeld has had little 
success: The Law has lost its right to curse the Jews by pronouncing an 
undeserved curse upon Jesus Christ, and the Jews have by that very fact been 
freed from the tyranny of the Law.—(4) Nor has the theory of Everett (The 
Gospel of Paul) met with any great favour: Christ crucified, being cursed 
by the Law, was legally impure and unable to observe the Law ; his disciples, 
in their turn, being crucified with him, were likewise impure from the legal 
point of view, and, therefore, exempt from the Law. But as where there is 
no Law there is no sin (Rom. v, 13), their deliverance from the Law would 
bring with it their deliverance from sin. See the refutation of this theory 
in Stevens, The Theol. of the N. 7., Edinburgh, 1899, pp. 405-406 (note). 
It is in vain for Everett to protest that his method is the right one and that his 
opponents (Bruce, Briggs, Holtzmann, Mead, etc.) are blinded by dogmatic 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 207 


real and the former apparent; one is valid in the eyes of God, 
the other has validity only in the erroneous estimation of 
men; one proceeds from a transgression of the Law, the 
other results from an external fact which has no connection 
with the Law; one has for its cause the just death of the 
guilty, the other has for its cause the unjust death of the 
innocent. We must not arbitrarily complete the thought of 
Paul, at the risk of falsifying it or making a travesty of it. 
Paul does not insinuate that the Law, by erroneously cursing 
the innocent, loses thenceforth the right to curse the guilty ; 
nor that the Law, by obtaining the death of Christ, receives 
all its due and has no longer anything to claim. These are 
the mere fancies of exegetes at bay. Simpler and less enig- 





prejudice ; he will found no school.—(c) A third system of interpretation is 
presented as follows by M. Tobac, who also adopts it (Le probléme de la 
iustification, p. 190) : “ The Law pronounced a curse against its transgressors ; 
that is to say, this curse, in the mind of Paul and probably also in the thought 
of the New Testament Jews and the adversaries of the Apostle, was death 
and thus exclusion from the kingdom. To this curse Christ submitted for 
our sake ; bearing the weight of our transgressions he was condemned by the 
sentence of death which the Law had passed, and was crucified by the Law. 
But how is this death at the same time a death to the Law? By being made 
accursed for our sake, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law : we are 
no longer ‘cursed by it, and we are no longer its debtors ; its claim is wiped 
out ; thenceforth also we have in a certain way shaken off its yoke. Just as 
Christ, by undergoing the punishment of death, delivered us at least legally 
from its power, so in an analogous way, by taking on himself the Law’s 
curse, he put an end, legally, to its domination.” All this is very complicated 
and very distorted ; it takes for granted as implicitly expressed a mass of ideas 
which Paul never does express and which agree very little with his thought. 
The explanation rests upon two false principles: the total substitution of 
Jesus Christ for sinners (dvré instead of twp), and the hypothesis that Jesus 
Christ delivers us from sin and the Law by suffering the punishment due to 
sin and pronounced by the Law, in our place. 

(D) Meaning of the passage—The participle yevopevos, from a gram- 
matical point of view, can be merely descriptive and circumstantial (deing 
made a curse for us), or causative (bezng made, or because he 1s made, a curse 
for us). The above-named exegetes adopt this last meaning, and they have 
then to explain why and how Christ has delivered the Jews from the curse 
of the Law by putting himself into the condition of being materzally cursed 
by the Law. They succeed in doing this only by means of subtle reasonings 
and by reading between the lines a quantity of things which Paul does not 
say and against which he would protest. It is best to add-nothing to what he 
states ; for his thought is quite clear and appears plainly in alli the analogous 
passages (Gal. iv, 4; Rom. viii, 3; 2 Cor. v, 21, etc.). The parallelism with 
Gal. iv, 4 is especially striking, since the circumstance is expressed by the 
same participle (yerduevos) and the conclusion by the same conjunction (iva). 


Gal. ili, 13, 14: Gal. iv, 4: 
Christus nos redemit de male- Misit Deus Filium suum 
dicto legis, 
factus pro nobis maledictum - factum sub muliere, factum sub lege, 
ut in gentibus benedictio ut eos, gut sub lege erant, redimeret, 
Abrahae fieret, 
ut pollicitationem Spiritus ut adoptionem filiorum reciperemus. 


acciptamus. 


208 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


matic is the real thought of the Apostle. The curse 
materially pronounced by the Law and accepted by the 
Saviour is not the means, but the condition, of our salvation. 
In other terms, Jesus Christ does not liberate the Jews from 
the yoke of the Law by the fact of taking upon himself the 
curse of the Law; but he takes upon himself the curse of the 
Law in order to be capable of freeing the Jews from the yoke 
of the Law. Why? Because, according to St Paul and the 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in our providential 
order, where redemption is effected according to the principle 
of solidarity, Jesus Christ has to be man in order to redeem 
men, subject to the Law in order to deliver those who are 
also subject to the Law, and a member of a sinful family in 
order to save sinners, clothed also with flesh in order to 
subdue the flesh in its own sphere, closely associated with the 
guilty in order to pour out upon them his justice; in a word, 
he must be subject to all our infirmities and miseries in order 
to be the ideal high priest, capable of opening for us the 
gates of heaven. 


2. This leads us to a statement of the highest importance— 
the soteriological value of the Resurrection: Christ was 
delivered up for our sins and rose again for our justification. } 

The first clause is a tacit quotation from Isaias, and the 
context shows that it is a question of the Messiah delivered 
up to death as a remedy for the sins of the people. This is 
an idea common to the whole New Testament. Jesus Christ 
delivered himself up to death, and if he was delivered up by 
Judas and the Jews, he was delivered up also by his Father. 2 


ee ee eee 
In both cases it is not the manner of the redemption which is indicated, but 
the condition. Jesus Christ does not deliver the Jews from the yoke of the 
Law, and does not confer on all of us the adoption of sons by the fact itself 
that he is subject to the Law and that he is born ef a woman like all others ; 
but it is here an essential condition of the redemptive work, it being supposed 
that God wishes to save men by the principle of solidarity. Thus Christ, 
tm order to remove the Law’s curse from the Jews, wishes to share in this curse. 
How, as a matter of fact, he will deliver them, Paul teaches us elsewhere ; 
but we must not seek in each text the whole body of his doctrine. 

* Rom. iv, 25: 

ds mapedd6n Sid 7a mapamrdpara tyav 
Kat HyépOn Sia TH Sixatwow Huav. 

The first pes is an almost textual quotation of Isa. liii, 12: 84 ras dvoplas 
adrdév mapedd0n, where the immediate context shows that it is necessary 
to translate it delivered up to death (mapedd6n eis Oavaroyv). 

The 8:a with the accusative is final; but the finality can refer to the past 
or the future pro subjecta materia. When it is a question of sins committed 
which are to be expiated, it refers to the past ; when it is a question of a 
justification still absent and to be secured, it naturally refers to the future. 
Therefore, in the first part of the phrase we translate: on account of our sins, 
and in the second : ¢z view of our justification. 

* Delivering himself up (Gal. ii, 20 ; Eph. v, 2), delivered up by the Jews 
(Matt. xx, 19; John xx, 11), delivered up by God (Rom. viii, 32 ; John iii, 16). 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 209 


This last meaning is made necessary here by the parallelism. 
Christ was delivered up by God on account of our sins, which 
his death alone, in the present providential order, could 
expiate. The difficulty is not there. 

But why did he rise again for our justification; or, what 
amounts to the same thing, why did God raise him again for 
our justification? It is not because Christ earned justification 
for us by rising from the dead, since after death he was no 
more capable of earning merit. Nor is it because the re- 
mission of sins and justification are separable; if it is per- 
missible to distinguish them as the negative and positive 
sides of our salvation, it would not be possible to separate 
them so much that one could ever go without the other. 
Certain heterodox authors propose this exegesis: ‘“ Jesus 
Christ is justified in his resurrection, and on account of our 
intimate union with him we are justified at the same time’? 
What a confusion of ideas and what nonsense! How is 
Jesus justified in his resurrection? Is it because God then 
proclaims him just? But had he not proclaimed him so 
during his mortal life, especially at his baptism? Is it 
because he then appears just in the eyes of men? But what 
relation can that have with our own justification? The 
following exposition is no better, even though it did lead a 
certain Catholic author to adopt it: “As our sins have, 
morally, ended in the death of Christ, so has our justification, 
morally, ended in his resurrection. Our condemnation had 
killed him, our justification has raised him from the dead.”? 
What does this enigma signify? Does it mean that, after 
having justified us by dying for us, Christ had no more 
reason for remaining dead, and that it is, therefore, we who, 
being justified, are in some way the involuntary cause of his 
resurrection? But how is this rather overstrained com- 
mentary deducible from the words of St Paul? 

Some Catholic interpreters, following the example of St 
Augustine, seek the key to the mystery in the fact that, since 
the Saviour’s resurrection is the foundation of our faith and 
the principal reason for its credibility, if Jesus Christ had not 
risen from the dead, we should not believe in him, and, 
through failing to believe in him, should not be justified; or 
else in this other fact that it was God’s plan that the Gospel 
was not to be preached until after Christ’s resurrection and 
that thus our faith—and consequently our resurrection— 
depend on it. But the connection established between Christ’s 
resurrection and our justification—the latter especially—is very 
frail, very external, very superficial, and how can we suppose 
that the Apostle leaves so much to be read between the lines? 


1 Candlish in Expositor, 1893, 4th ser., vol. viii, pp. 466-470; Everett, 
Gospel of Paul, pp. 199-200, Otto, Ménégoz, etc. 
® Godet, in his Commentary, and some others. 
Il. 14 


210 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


St John Chrysostom grasps the question more closely. 
For him Christ’s death and resurrection are only the two 
faces of one and the same redemptive act, so that the results 
of redemption can be impartially ascribed to one or the other. 
If our justification is related to the resurrection rather than to 
the death of Christ, it is, according to St Thomas, because 
Jesus Christ is in his death the meritorious cause, while in 
his resurrection he is the exemplary cause of our justification ; 
he rose from the dead, therefore, to serve for us as a model 
in the acquisition of a new life. All this appears very con- 
formable to the mind of Paul; perhaps, however, one last 
touch is wanting. 

Jesus Christ did not come to this earth simply to die; he 
came to unite us with hin? and to associate us with his 
triumph. It was not therefore sufficient for him to die for 
us ; he had also to rise again for us.1- His death was only half 
of the redemptive work, which requires his resurrection as its 
necessary complement. In fact, the justification of each one 
of us is produced by faith and baptism; and it is easy to see 
how the resurrection of Jesus influences these two causes; 
for our faith in Christ is not a faith in Christ dead, but in 
Christ living and risen from the grave; and baptism is not 
only the efficacious symbol of the death of Christ, but also of 
his glorious life. 

So the act and the rite which incorporate us with Christ are 
put in constant relation with his resurrection. In this very 
text the Apostle has just said that faith will be imputed to us 
for justice, as it was to Abraham, “ if we believe in him that 
raised up Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead.’ A little 
further on he says : “ If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord 
Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up 
from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Without the resurrec- 
tion faith has not its real object, nor has baptism its complete 
symbolism. In baptism, indeed, we die and rise again with 
Jesus Christ; we die mystically with him inasmuch as we are 
associated with his death, and we rise again inasmuch as we 
are sacramentally associated with his resurrection. Eliminate 
the resurrection, and baptism and faith itself, which does not 
justify without some connection with baptism, lose their sig- 
nificance and hence their efficacy. This is one of the reasons 
for which Jesus Christ “rises again” in view of our justifi- 
cation. 

There is another and still deeper reason—that Christ’s 
resurrection is for us the most solid ground for our faith, the 
providential condition of the sending out of the apostles, and 
the sure pledge of our own resurrection; that it is for him the 
just recompense for his merits, the natural result of his 


1 2 Cor. v, 15 : guéz pro ipsis mortuus est et resurrextt. 
* Rom. iv, 24. *? Romi. x; 9. Cf ii, 24-314 eThesswivata, 


THE REDEEMING DEATH aa 


fulness of graces, the worthy coronation of his redemptive 
work ; and that it is for God the seal placed upon redemption, 
a declaration of peace given to men and the expression of his 
favour finally regained. All these are common-sense truths. 
But it 1s something more and better than that; it is closely 
connected. with the result of the redemptive death and with 
the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is at the moment of the 
resurrection that Jesus Christ becomes a ‘“ quickening 
Spirit.” Previously he had indeed the Spirit in its fulness, 
but the Spirit which dwelt within him, fettered by the limita- 
tions inherent in the scheme of redemption, could not there 
exercise all its living power. Above all, Christ himself was 
not yet able to communicate to others the fulness of life. 
This privilege had, for a preliminary condition, the death and 
the resurrection. - ‘‘ It is expedient that I go away,’’ Jesus 
had said; ‘‘ for, if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not 
come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you.’”? 
And as he was himself to come with the Paraclete, he added : 
“T will not leave you orphans, I will come to you.” St Paul 
expresses the same thing under this concise and enigmatical 
form. Christ glorified becomes a ‘quickening Spirit”; he 
becomes for his disciples a permanent source of graces and 
life. ‘‘ The work of Christ includes two things—what he has 
done for all men and what he still does for each of them; 
what he did once for all and what he now does incessantly ; 
what he has done for us and what he does within us; what he 
has done on earth and what he is doing in heaven; what 
he has done in person and what he is doing by his Spirit ; he 
reconciles by offering himself upon the cross, he justifies by 
sending us his Spirit ’* and by himself working within us in 
spirit. 


3. This twofold complementary role naturally explains the 
curious duality pointed out with pleasure by many heterodox 
theologians.5 According to them, St Paul had two theories 
of redemption, different, if not incongruous, sometimes run- 
ning parallel to one another without any tendency to meet, 
sometimes approaching each other to the point of touching 
and blending ; one, which may be called juridical, because it 
is based on the principle of compensation, penal substitution, 
and vicarious satisfaction, attributes to the death of Christ an 
objective value, independent of the individual application ; 
the other, which shall be called moral, because it is based 
upon the fact of inward restoration, recognizes in redemption 


ae (OPs xy; 45.;.see pp..172, 173: * John xvi, 7. 

3 John xiv, 18. 

¢ Newman, Lectures on Justification®, London, 1892, ix, Note I. 

8 Particularly by Holtzmann (Meutest. Theol., vol. ii, pp. 114-121), whom 
the above statement follows. 


212 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


only a subjective value, in so far as man makes it his own by 
faith and union with Christ. In the first theory reconciliation 
takes place outside of the soul, and is accomplished by virtue 
of a sort of contract concluded between God and humanity, 
with Christ as mediator; in the second it is a product of the | 
conscience itself. The juridical theory deals with the ideas of 
expiation, propitiation, sacrifice, substitution; in a word, 
with the categories of popular Judaism; it is a remnant of the 
pharisaical education of Saul; the moral theory is derived 
rather from Hellenic thought and reflects the religious ex- 
perience of Paul after the transformation which took place in 
him on the road to Damascus. The same duality of theories 
is found in the explanation of the origin of sin, which he 
sometimes connects with.the historical fact of the first fall, 
and at other times refers to the psychological determinism of 
the flesh; it is found also again in the concepts of justifica- 
tion, salvation, and judgement; in a word, it dominates all 
the Apostle’s teaching. Some declare that a reconciliation 
between them is impossible and maintain that in Paul’s mind 
the synthesis was not made; others try to solve the contra- 
diction, but do so by eliminating one of the two points of 
view; some, again, are of the opinion that it is necessary to 
leave both systems independent, without attempting to com- 
bine them or to subordinate one to the other, through fear of 
changing their nature by seeking to unite them. 

These are but vain scruples. “St Paul took care to 
bring the two aspects of the redemptive work face to face 
and to set forth their close relations: ‘‘ Being justified freely 
by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ 
Jesus, God hath sent him forth as a propitiation, through 
faith in his blood, to show his justice now, that he may be 
just and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus Christ.’”? 

According to this passage, three initiatives on the part of 
God, three operations on the part of Christ, and three senti- 
ments on the part of man concur in the redemptive work. 
God, seeing us incapable of getting free from sin by our own 
efforts, decides to justify us freely; this is the initiative of 
grace. He also decides to make Christ an instrument of 
propitiation and to exhibit him as such to the gaze of the 
world; this is the triumph of wisdom. He wishes thus to 
demonstrate that he is and was always just, in spite of his 
former apparent indifference in regard to sin; this is the 
amends made by justice. Christ, on his side, accomplishes 
the work of redemption—that is, the deliverance of sinners— 
and this redemption, far from being opposed to grace, acts in 
harmony with it. He accomplishes the propitiation when, 
exptating sin, which had raised a barrier between God and 
ourselves, he makes God propitious to us. He effects redemp- 


1 Rom. tii, 24-26. For exegetical details, see Vol. I, pp. 204-6. 


THE REDEEMING DEATH 213 


tion and propitiation as a victim; the efficacy of salvation is 
in his blood. Man, however, does not remain passive; his 
salvation is not concluded without his co-operation ; his con- 
tribution is faith, faith in Christ the Saviour; he meditates 
upon the lesson of Calvary and understands that he must 
respond to so much love with gratitude; finally, in view of 
this demonstration of divine justice, he learns to dread the 
wrath of God and to trust in his mercy. 

In this way the doctrine of redemption forms a coherent 
whole, in which the most diverse points of view harmonize. 

The fact of man’s restoration corresponds exactly to the 
history of his fall. Calvary is the reply to Eden. Humanity 
falls and rises again in its respective representatives. An act 
of disobedience ruins it, an act of obedience saves it. What 
light is thus thrown upon the unity of the redemptive plans, 
human brotherhood, and the communion of saints! 

God is no more the creditor eager for the payment of his 
debt, nor the sovereign jealous of avenging his rights at any 
price; he is the eminently good, holy, just and wise Father, 
who, in his persistent love for guilty man, takes the initiative 
in order to save him, and brings into action his omnipotence 
to carry out a phan which best conciliates all his attributes— 
goodness, holiness, justice and wisdom. 

Jesus Christ is always the victim, whose blood expiates sin, 
effects propitiation, seals the covenant, and opens heaven; 
but he is no longer an inert victim endowed with a kind of 
magic virtue; his blood, however precious it may be, is valid 
only through the free and loving offering which he makes of 
it to his Father in the name of the humanity contained in 
him as its head. It is no longer a question of a substitution, 
by which the innocent should undergo the punishment of the 
guilty, but of a sublime condescension which leads the Son of 
God to identify his cause with that of sinners; nor is it a 
question of an external satisfaction given to God in order to 
extort from him the pardon of criminals, but of a filial 
homage which, thanks to Jesus Christ, the human race pays 
of itself and which God accepts because he initiated it and 
has the principal part in it. 

The resurrection of Jesus is no more a supernatural luxury 
offered to the admiration of the elect, nor a simple recom- 
pense accorded to his merits, nor merely the support of our 
faith and the pledge of our hope; it is an essential comple- 
ment and an integral part of redemption itself. 

Finally, man is no more the passive witness of a drama 
which is being played outside of him, and in which he has no 
part; he dies ideally on Calvary with the dying Christ and 
lives again mystically in him in the act of faith and the sacred 
rite which apply to him the fruit of the redemptive death. 


CHAP E Resi il 


THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 


AN’S redemption takes three steps—at Calvary, 

the Baptism, and the Parousia. On Calvary it 

is accomplished by right, in principle, and in 

power ; at baptism it is realized in fact and in 

deed, although still imperfectly ; on the day of 
the parousia it will be finished and consummated. Intrinsic- 
ally connected with the death.of Christ, potential redemption 
is independent of its more or less extended applications, and, 
so to speak, of its historical success. The immediate effects 
of it are the reconciliation of the human race with God and 
the victory of Christ over the enemies of humanity. 


I—TuHE RECONCILIATION EFFECTED 
1. The Wrath of God. 2. Aspects of the Reconciliation. 


1. God hates sin in the same proportion as he loves moral 
order—namely, infinitely. Hatred of evil is as essential to 
him as the love of good, for both proceed from his sanctity. 
If contempt is added to the offence committed, the wrath of 
God is kindled. We know in what lurid imagery the Bible 
depicts the divine anger. God rises in fury to avenge his 
ignored rights; he rushes to the combat like a warrior; like 
a devouring fire he scatters and consumes his enemies. When 
his people, forgetful of the covenant, prefer strange gods to 
him, he calls himself a jealous God; and his jealousy bursts 
forth in terrible reprisals against the unfaithful and their 
seducers. Fundamentally his wrath is no more anthropo- 
morphic than his love, for it is only the necessary reaction of 
outraged love. We may, therefore, refine as much as we 
like the concept of the divine wrath, but let us take care not 
to eliminate it entirely under the pretext that it is incom- 
patible with infinite perfection. Precisely because it is trans- 
cendental, infinite perfection can include contrasts which in a 
finite being would be contradictions. Far from excluding 
mercy, the wrath of God presupposes and completes it; it 
will be all the more dreadful the slower it was to move, and 
all the more efficacious in destroying sin, because it leaves 
the door open for repentance. This is why the sacred writers 
so frequently couple the wrath of God with his mercy and his 
forgiveness with his vengeance, as if there were nothing more 
easily reconcilable than this contrast. 

The same order of ideas reigns throughout the New Testa- 

214 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 215 


ment. No doubt the wrath of God usually assumes an escha- 
tological turn and has for its goal the last judgement, called 
by antonomasia the day of wrath; it tends to become rather 
individual, instead of being, above all, collective; it is pro- 
voked by every infraction of the divine will, instead of being 
provoked in general, as formerly, by the violation of the 
covenant. But apart from these reservations, which belong 
to the difference between the two systems, God’s attitude 
towards the sinner remains identical. Before their conver- 
sion Jews and Gentiles were “ by nature children of wrath” ;1 
that is to say, retaining the strength of the biblical language, 
deserving of the divine wrath, the dreadful consequence of 
which weighed upon them. Hardened sinners, “ fitted for 
destruction,” are called “vessels of wrath,”? because they 
are actually the object of God’s wrath, which would be let 
loose upon them at once were it not for the counterweight of 
his long-suffering. The Mosaic Law, by augmenting sin, 
“worketh wrath” ;* every transgression invites it, and the 
guilty one accumulates upon his “head treasures of wrath 
against the day of wrath.’’* But it is not always neutralized, 
even here below, by mercy; from this time forward it bursts 
forth against the unbelieving Jews® and applies the law of 
retaliation® to the pagans, blinded by their criminal passions. 
It is not, therefore, permissible to say that in the New 
Testament, and particularly in the Epistles of St Paul, the 
wrath of God is a purely eschatological concept. If, however, 
it does begin to manifest itself on earth, it is there almost 
always counterbalanced by mercy, and it will reach its com- 
plete, universal, and final manifestation only on the day of 
judgement.’ 

Wrath, kindled by an offence, necessarily implies a certain 

* Eph. ii, 3: jyeba réxva ddce dpyis. See pp. 61, 62. 

* Rom. ix, 22. They are now “vessels of wrath/’ (oxedn dpyis) since 
God has need of all his patience to endure them (jveyxev év 70d paxpobupig) 
despite his desire to manifest at once the wrath which he feels towards them 
(9éAwy evdeifacbar tiv dpyiv). See Vol. I, pp. 256, 257. 

® Rom. iv, 15: 6 véuos opyjv xarepydlerat. 

Som i; 5. 

® 1 Thess, ii, 16: ép8acev én’ adrods % spy?) ets réAos. The wrath of 
God, which will pursue the impenitent Jews to the end (eis réXos) has 
already fallen upon them (EdBacer, 

® Rom. i, 18: adavoxaAvmrerat (present) cpy7) Qeod. 

7 Rom. ii, 5: Onoaupilers ceauvtG cpyjv ev yuepa opyis; ef. ii, 8: 
wrath and indignation (épy7 xai Ouyés) await the rebels.—The wrath is again 
eschatological in 1 Thess. i, Io (Inoobv tov pudpevov Huds éx Tis opyns THs 
€pxouevns) and also no doubt in Col. iii, 6 (8 @ Epxerat 7 opy? Tob Qeod) 
and in Eph. v, 6 (dia ratra epyerat 4 dpy) tod Geod emt tovs viods ris 
dzeweias) on account of the similarity of expression; likewise in Rom. v, 9 
(owOnoducba 8.’ avrod awd ris spyfs), in 1 Thess. v, 9 (obn Eero tyuas 6 
Geos eis dpyjv) and in Rom. iii, 5 (um ddiKos 6 Geds 6 emipepwr tiv dspyiv;). 
However, the last two cases are debatable ; above all, the last, which may be 
wee of a wrath manifested by God against unbelievers already in this 

ife. 


216 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


hostility, on the part of the person wounded in his honour 
and his rights, against the person of the offender. So the 
not very scriptural formula that ‘‘ God hates sin while loving 
the sinner” would not have the approval of Paul. Without 
speaking of the quotation from Malachias—‘*I have hated 
Esau ’!—which could not be understood as referring to a 
relative love, the Apostle represents God as pursuing the 
guilty man with his enmity. God, it is true, becomes the 
enemy of man only after man has declared himself the enemy 
of God; but from that moment the hatreds are mutual, 
although in an infinite being the hatred does not exclude love. 
‘If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by 
the death of his Son, much. more, being reconciled, shall we 
be saved by his life.”?_ The word “ enemies ” is here put into 
opposition to the word “ reconciled,” which is itself explained 
by the expression “ saved from wrath.” It designates, there- 
fore, not the enmity of sinners to God, but the enmity of 
which sinners were the object on the part of God. The 
necessity of the reasoning here, as well as the movement of 
the thought, requires this exegesis, for it is the change of 
God’s attitude towards us which guarantees to us in future 
his kindly sentiments and bases our hope on an immovable 
foundation. When Paul, speaking of the unbelieving Jews, 
says to the pagan converts, ‘“‘ They are enemies for your sake 
as concerning the Gospel, but as touching the election they 
are most dear for the sake of the fathers,”*® the same idea is 
presented with complete proof. Collectively, as a nation, the 
Jews are at the same time detested and loved by God; 


? Rom. ix, 13, quoting Mal. i, 3-4. See Vol. I, pp. 252-4. 

2 Rom. v, to. See subsequently pp. 218-9. 

* Rom. xi, 28: xara pev 70 ebayyeAtov é€xOpol 8V buds, Kata 5é THY exdoy}v 
dyanntot 8a tovs matépas. The subject of the phrase is clearly Israel (was 
*IopandA, verse 26; avrdv, verse 27); the Israelites are therefore, at the same 
time, from two different points of view, enemies and friends, not of Paul, but 
of God, as the following verses (29-30) prove beyond the shadow of a doubt. 
The phrase, skilfully constructed, is wholly composed of antitheses: €y6pot 
corresponds to ayamnrol; xara 76 evayyéAvov corresponds to Kara THY ExAoyHy ; 
5c’ buds to dua rods warepas, and the contrast is accentuated by the particles 
pev and 5¢.—The opposition with dyaznrot (beloved of God) shows that €x@pot 
is passive and signifies “‘ hated by God.” The motive and end which inspire 
God show it no less: it is “‘ on account of the Gospel ’”’ not in itself, for the 
Gospel excludes no one, but inasmuch as it has been rejected by the Jews; 
and it is ‘‘ with a view to the Gentiles ”’ (6:’ duds) because the unbelief of the 
Jews, foreseen by God, has had for its effect to hasten the evangelization of the 
pagans (verses II, 15, 19).—However, from another point of view, Israel 
remains the favourite of Jehovah : it is “‘ on account of the election ”’ of which 
Israe! was formerly the object (Deut. iv, 37) and which is not revoked (verses 
2 and 29) ; and it is “‘ on account of the patriarchs,’”’ the sacred root (verse 16) 
which communicates to the branches something of its goodness.—The text 
in its entirety and in its details could not be clearer, and we see how it would 
be so obscured as to be unintelligible if theological notions foreign to the 
subject were mixed up with it; for example, by taking “ election”’ in the 
concrete sense, as referring to those “elected to celestial glory ’’ (St Augustine) . 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION at 


detested on account of the Gospel which they have refused to 
accept, yet nevertheless loved on account of the gracious 
election of which they were formerly the object and because 
they are of the lineage of the patriarchs. If it be objected 
that the theocratic election is annulled in all its results by the 
present unbelief of Israel, Paul replies that “ the gifts of God 
are without repentance.”? Israel, therefore, is at the same 
time worthy of love and of hate from two different points of 
view; it feels now the effects of the hate which excludes it 
from the messianic kingdom, and it will experience subse- 
quently the effects of love, when it shall be assembled en 
masse within the bosom of the Church. 


2. These preliminaries bring us naturally to the biblical 
concept of reconciliation. Reconciliation is bilateral or uni- 
lateral according as the injuries are reciprocal or all on one 
side; in both cases it re-establishes good relations between 
the contending parties by suppressing the cause of their 
disagreement. Sin being an act of hostility directed against 
God, it is man who assumes the offensive, and God merely 
defends his injured honour; but the hatreds are reciprocal, 
although the real injuries are not. It follows that the recon- 
ciliation also must be reciprocal, and that it is not enough 
that God lays aside his anger if man on his part does not 
adopt new feelings towards God. It is on this account that 
it appears sometimes to be a direct consequence of man’s 
conversion, and at other times a simple change of attitude on 
the part of God. And according as one fixes his gaze on the 
one or the other of these aspects, one is disposed to see, with 
official Protestantism, only an arbitrary act of God, forgetting 
the sin without regard to man’s dispositions, or else, with 
the school of Ritschl, only the gradual transformation of the 
sinner in presence of a God always equally well disposed to 
man, in spite of sin. 

The words “to reconcile”? and “ reconciliation” are united 
in four or five texts which are very different in appearance. ? 
Once the reconciliation effected by the blood of Christ ex- 
pands to the point of embracing the totality of created beings. 


* Rom. xi, 29: dyerapéAnra yap. 7a yaplopara xal % KAjow Tod Geod. 
The free gifts (yaplopara) are, for example, the honorary titles of Israel 
(Rom. ix, 4-5). The vocation (xAfjows) is the theocratic vocation which , 
according to the plans of God, leads to the Gospel. 

* If we omit 1 Cor. vii, 11 (uevérw dyapos H7®@ avdpi xata\ayyrw), where 
it is a question of the reconciliation of separated husbands and wives, 
the words which express reconciliation with God, or effected by God, are 
gathered into five passages: Rom. v, 10, II ; Rom. xi, 15 ; 2 Cor. v, 18-20 ; 
Col. i, 20, 21; Eph. ii, 16. But as in Rom. xi, 15 the reconciliation is 
mentioned only casually, the doctrine is to be derived from the other texts, 
where the substantive xaraAAayy recurs three times, the verb xara\Adecew 
four times, and the doubly compounded verb droxaraAAdocew twice. 


THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


It hath well pleased the Father to make all fulness dwell in him, 

and by him to reconcile all things unto himself, 

making peace through the blood of his cross, 

by him [I say] whether the things that are on earth or the things that 
are in heaven." 


218 


The meaning is not obscure provided we avoid any useless 
complication. God, to whom always belongs the initiative of 
the salvation of men and of the redemptive plans, has been 
pleased to make all fulness dwell in Christ—fulness of being 
and fulness of graces—in order to pacify and reconcile all 
things in Christ, who is the centre of creation and the bond 
of union between all beings. 

Everywhere else the Apostle’s vision does not go beyond 
the salvation of men, and the reconciliation of which he 
speaks is made with God. 


If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of 
his Son ;{ much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 

And not only so: but also we glory in God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom we have now received reconciliation.* 


i 


1 Col. i, 19, 20. This text has been previously explained, pp. 90-92. 


2 > ‘ ? 4] 4 ww 
Rom. v, 10: et yap €xUpot ovres 

, A a A) a / 
KaTnAAddynper TS Gew bia toh Pavarov 
rob viod abrot, ToAA@ paddAov Kxatad- 
Aayévres cwOnodpeba ev TH CwH avdrod. 
II. ob povov dé, dAAd Kal Kavyd- 
pevor ev TH Geg Sa rod Kupiov judr 


"T, X., 8V od viv caraMayjy eAdBoper. 


A. 10. St entm cum intmict esse- 
mus, reconciliatt sumus Deo per 
mortem jSlit ejus, multo magts recon- 
ciliati, salut erimus tn vita ipstus. 

B. 11. Mon solum autem: sed et 
gloriamur in Deo per Dominum no- 
strum J.C. per quem nunc reconctlta- 


tionem accepimus. 


A. Verse 10 is a confirmation (ydp) of the preceding verse, to which he 
adds anew conclusion. The Apostle has just said, verse 9: ‘‘ If, when we were 
sinners, Christ died for us, much more, being now justified by his blood, shall 
we be saved from wrath through him.” He adds: “ For if, when we were 
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, 
being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” This new @ fortiort is more 
general; it contains the preceding one with something more ; instead of 
sinners, we read now enemies ; instead of justified, reconciled , instead of a 
refuge against wrath, salvation ; instead of the death of Christ as a guarantee 
of pardon, there is his life as a pledge of life eternal. Thea fortiort is, on 
the one hand, based upon the fact that the glorious life of the Saviour has 
a symbolical value superior to his death, for his death expresses the negative 
side and his life the positive side of redemption (cf. Rom. iv, 25); on the 
other hand, it is based upon the difference of the subjects to which redemption 
applies: here, reconciled (or justified) ; there, enemies (or sinners).—The 
whole context makes prominent God’s dispositions in regard to us and the 
divine action which responds to these dispositions. It results from this that 
éy@pot must be taken in the passive sense (object of the divine hostility) and 
that carnAdynuer Tw Ges must signifiy ‘“‘ we were reconciled to God,” who 
abandoned his causes of complaint; the reason for this change of attitude 
is indicated: ‘‘ by the death of his Son.” 

B. It is not enough to be reconciled and saved ; we are to glory in God, 
the author of our reconciliation and salvation. Verses 9, 10 and 11 take up 
point by point the proposition announced at the beginning of the chapter: 
we are justified, we have peace with God, we glory in him (verses 1-2) ; we are 
justified by the blood of Christ (verse 9) ; we are reconciled to God by his death 
(verse 10); and we glory in God through our Saviour Jesus Christ, the instru: 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION aig 


God is the author of the reconciliation; Jesus Christ is the 
instrument and the meritorious cause of it; man is its subject, 
and, as it were, its recipient. It is always God who reconciles 
and man who is reconciled. It does not follow at all that the 
reconciliation is one-sided; but this manner of speaking, 
certainly intentional, shows that the initiative proceeds from 
God, that man has no valid complaints, and that it is there- 
fore for him to receive the peace, not to offer it. The recon- 
ciliation, in fact, comes down from God to man and does not 
ascend from man to God; it begins by the abandonment of 
the Creator’s complaints against his creature. Enemies of 
God and objects of his wrath, which our sins had provoked 
and which we were powerless to mitigate, it was absolutely 
necessary for God, the offended party, to reconcile us to him. 
There is here a very fine shade of expression which, without 
eliminating the co-operation of man, leaves to God all the 
honour of the result. Hence, if man has no right to glory in 
himself, he can glory in God who works great things in him, 
yet does not do them without him. 

To the Corinthians still more than to the Romans the 
Apostle presents the reconciliation under its many aspects : 


But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Christ 
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. For God indeed was 
in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their 
sins ; and he hath placed in us the word of reconciliation. 

For Christ therefore we are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting 
by us. For Christ’s sake we beseech you, be reconciled to God.! 


ment of reconciliation (verse 11: 80° ob viv rHv KaraAAayny eAdBoywev). Thecon- 
struction of verse II is a little difficult, if we read with the critical editions 
Kavxywpevot instead of xavywpyea. The simplest is to understand éopeév 
after cavywpevot, as in 2 Cor. vii, 5 ; vill, 19; cf. Rom. ili, 24. We can also 
mentally supply ow@jodpueba from the preceding phrase: not only (shall we 
be saved) but (we shall be saved) in glorying in God. Another difficulty 
is that the reconciliation appears sometimes potential and objective (verse Io), 
sometimes actual and subjective (verse 11); but we know that the Apostle 
likes to unite the two ideas of redemption closely. 
PeeCoray,, 1641920: 


A. 18. 7a 5€ advra é€x Tod Geoh roG6_ = A. 18. Omnia autem ex Deo, quit 


Katadrdgavros nuas €avt@ dia X ptatod 
Kat Sdovros nuiv Hv dtaxoviay THS 
xaraAX\ay7s, 

B. 19. ws 6rte Oeos Fv ev Xprora 
Koopov KataAAdoawy €auT®, p17) Aoyi- 
Copevos avrois Ta mapanTwpata avtav, 
Kat Oéuevos ev nuiv tov Adyov THs 
Kataddayis. 

C. 20. ‘Yrép Xpior0d obv mpecBevo- 
pev ws toO Oeod mapaxadotvros 8v 
¢ 7 / € A ~ 
npav: Sedueba vrep Xptotod: Karad- 
Aaynte TH Ged. 


nos reconcthtautt stbt per Christum - 
et dedtt nobis mintisterium recon- 
ctltationts. 

B. 19. Quontam quidem Deus erat 
in Christo mundum reconctlians stbt, 
non reputans tlits delicta tpsorum, et 
posutt in nobis verbum reconctlia- 
tionts. 

C. 20. Pro Christo ergo legatione 
fungimur, tanquam Deo exhortante 
per nos. Obsecramus pro Christo, 
reconctliamtint Deo. 


A. Paul has just said: “‘ If then any be in Christ, he is a new creature. 
The old things are passed away ; behold all things are made new.”’ (The 
Vulgate is susceptible of taking this meaning by dividing the phrase thus ; 


220 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Here, as always, the initiative comes from the Father. It 
is not, therefore, man who reconciles himself to God, but the 
Father who reconciles us to himself by Christ or in Christ. 
The reconciliation is made in several stages. First, God, 
having constituted his Son a victim of expiation, forgets the 
crimes of men out of regard for this Son. It is still only a 
potential reconciliation ; for it to become actual there must be 
in man a movement to return to him, a movement which is 
effected with the co-operation of man at the call and instiga- 
tion of God. The apostles are the first to be invited to this 
reconciliation, of which they are made the heralds and the 
agents, because they receive the official command to promul- 
gate and transmit it. Their message, briefly stated, is this: 
“ Let yourselves be reconciled to God,” or, ‘‘ Be reconciled to 





Si qua [creatura] in Christo, nova creatura. Veteratransterunt . ecce facta 
sunt omnia nova.) He continues in these words: “ All things are of God” 
—that is to say, God takes the initiative in all this transformation which he 
works through Christ. And this transformation begins by the Apostles, more 
especially concerned, because they are accused of having human thoughts. 
No, these thoughts are foreign to them (verses 14, 15) ; they no longer know any- 
one according to the flesh (verse 16) ; their entire being 1s renewed (verse 17). 
God is the author of this change, he who reconciles them to himself in Christ, 
and who has confided to them the ministry of reconciliation (verse 18; the 
pronoun pas, jpiv, designates the Apostles only, since it is a question of 
them alone and since they only have received the mission to reconcile men to 
God.) 

B. From this particular case of the Apostles, Paul rises to the general 
principle. The transition, which moreover is a natural one, was suggested 
by the statement: Vetera transierunt, ecce facta sunt (omnia) nova. We 
must not translate: “‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” 
but rather: ‘‘ God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ’; for the 
circumlocution #v xataAAdcowv is equivalent to an imperfect, with this one 
difference, that instead of expressing simply the action of God, it shows God 
in the process of acting. The world is evidently “‘ the human race,” a meaning 
which the word xécyos with or without an article often has in St Paul. The 
two participles which follow do not express the mode of the reconciliation, 
but the czvcumstances which accompany it, for it is evident that God does not 
reconcile the world to himself dy confiding the message of reconciliation to the 
Apostles, The reconciliation here referred tois objective, zdea/,and concerns 
all humanity ; it designates the new attitude of God towards the human race. 
In view of Christ (¢v Xptot@), God takes no account of the sins of the human 
race ; he acts in regard to men, as if those sins did not exist (yu Aoy:éuevos 
avTois Ta TapanTwyaTa av’T@v); even more, he commands the apostles to 
announce to all his benevolent dispositions («at Oéjevos ev jutv tov Adyov THs 
xataMayijs ). 

C. All is ready now for the sudbjectzve reconciliation on the part of man. 
The apostles are the ambassadors of God, they exhort in his name (mpeoBevopev 
ws To6 Geod mapaxadoivros 8’ Hydv), since they have the message (Adyos) 
and the ministry (Saxovia) of reconciliation, and are the heralds and, what 
is more, the agents of it. Their message is short: “‘ We beseech you for Christ 
(izép, in his interest and for his service) be reconciled with God.” To 
KaTaAAdynre a reflexive sense is rightly given (let yourselves be reconciled to 
God, do on your part what is necessary for this); indeed, the exhortation 
proves that there is on the part of man a condition to be fulfilled in order 
that the reconciliation, both subjective and effective, may be accoimplished. 


IMMEDIATE. EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 221 


God.” Finally, in order that the reconciliation may be effec- 
tive, men must prepare, by their free assent to faith, a soil 
propitious for the divine action. The _ initiative ‘of the 
heavenly Father, the apostolic message, the response of man 
to this message—such are the three phases or stages of Ee 
reconciliation. Wherever the reconciliation is mentioned, 

is God who accomplishes it through the mediation of Christ ; 
but if it begins by a change of attitude on the part of God 
towards man, it must be completed aiiaye by a change of 
attitude of man towards God. 

The epistles written in captivity offer us a somewhat 
different conception. In the Epistle to the Ephesians one and 
the same word seems to express at once the mutual recon- 
ciliation of the Jews and Gentiles to one another and their 
common reconciliation to God, without our being able to say 
certainly whether these two reconciliations are simultaneous 
or whether one is presented as the logical antecedent of the 
other.! Nevertheless, the fact is that this double reconcilia- 
tion is always accomplished by the cross of Christ and by a 
union in his mystical body. The passage in the Epistle to the 
Colossians is still more remarkable ;? it is a question there of 
a double reconciliation which includes at the same time the 
conversion of men to God and the mutual reconciliation of his 
creatures, who up to that time have been at war with one 
another. The horizon of reconciliation becomes enlarged, 
and we see that all things again find concord and harmony 
in Christ, the universal peacemaker. 


II—TuHE VANQUISHED ENEMIES 
1. Sin, the Flesh and Death. 2. The Mosaic Law. 


1. The death of Christ has borne its fruits, and his sacrifice 
has not been in vain. Why did he come to earth? In order 
to destroy sin and to abolish its deadly consequences. This 
aim was realized. 


There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
Jesus. For the Law of the Spirit of life hath delivered thee, in Christ 
Jesus, from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, 
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his Son, in the likeness 
of sinful flesh, hath condemned sin in the flesh.® 


This condemnation is a sentence of death. Thenceforth sin 
has no strength; it reigns no longer over humanity, and we 
are delivered from its tyranny. We have seen in the Epistle 
to the Romans what the sad condition of our slavery to sin 
was and what has been the mode of our liberation from it. 

If Jesus Christ, in dying for us, had merely proposed to 


1 Eph. ii, 16. See pp. 225-7. * Col. i, 19, 20. See pp. 90-92. 
$ Rom. viii, 1-3. See above, pp. 163-165. 


222 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


restore to us what Adam had caused us to lose, the redemp- 
tive death would have had to put us again in possession of 
our original integrity and immortality ; but the plan of salva- 
tion adopted by God, instead of giving us back exactly the 
privileges that we had lost, substitutes for them something 
more excellent. Our present lot is different but better ; 

instead of abolishing the decree of death, God grants us a 
glorious immortality; instead of extinguishing the fires of 
concupiscence, he gives us, with the certainty of conquering, 
all the reward of victory. While awaiting the final triumph, 
‘our body is mortal on account of sin,” but death is power- 
less to keep its prey; we have to contend against the flesh, 
but we are not its slaves; the inclination to evil continues its 
attacks, but we are freed from its domination. ‘ The law of 
the Spirit of life hath delivered us in Christ Jesus from the 
law of sin and death.” The force by which: sin and death 
once maintained their empire is broken by a superior force— 
grace; sin can no more subjugate us in spite of ourselves, 
nor can death retain us in its grasp. 

This is why St Paul does not hesitate to say that “our 
Saviour, Christ Jesus, has destroyed death and brought life 
and immortality to light.” Death has been destroyed, or, 
rather, rendered powerless; this is an acquired result, a first- 
fruit of Calvary, a blessing granted at the very moment when 
the springs of life gushed forth. The effect is not immediate, 
for it is only too evident that men continue to die. No doubt 
hereafter ‘‘neither death nor life can separate us from the love 
of God in Christ,” and “ whether we live or die we are the 
Lord’s,” but death none the less retains a remnant of its 
empire ; though conquered by Christ, it is not annihilated; it 
will be the last of the hostile powers to be exterminated, when 
at the hour of the resurrection it will be swallowed up in the 
supreme triumph of the Redeemer. Novissima autem inimica 
destruetur mors. 

Death is natural to man, for it results from his organic 
constitution ; but, raised to the supernatural level, it is also a 
punishment for sin. Those who consider the death of Christ 
as a debt paid for us, or as a penalty endured in our place, 
find themselves here in an embarrassment, from which no 
subtlety can extricate them; for a debt, once paid, is no more 
subject to demand, and a "penalty, once undergone, is not 
inflicted a second time. The Christian ought not, therefore, 
to die; nor the unbeliever either, since Jesus Christ ‘died for 
all men. But we know already that the death of Christ has 
for us another significance and another kind of efficacy. We 
see, therefore, nothing contradictory in these two assertions 
of St Paul: ‘ No more condemnation now unto those who are 
in Christ Jesus,” and “ The body is doomed to death on 
account of sin.”’ In our present providential order death is 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 223 


indeed a consequence, a result of sin, since without sin it 
would not exist. Must it still be called a punishment, even 
in the just man, who is the object of no “ condemnation,” 
inasmuch as he is “in Christ Jesus”? That is a question of 
words, with no great theological importance. 

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the liberation of the Christian 
is not instantaneous but progressive. It is ideal on Calvary, 
where Christ undoes the work of Adam in order to remake 
the lot of humanity better; it is real, although imperfect, at 
baptism, when the Christian begins to participate practically 
in the destinies of Christ; it is complete at the resurrection, 
when the divine plan is consummated. 


2. With the Mosaic Law the conditions are very different. 
Since its maintenance or abrogation is independent of man’s 
co-operation, it is not necessary to seek for successive 
moments in its annulment. It disappears naturally with the 
coming of Christ, who is its end, when it has no more reason 
for existence, and when the promises which are irreconcilable 
with it are realized. But even though it should retain its 
validity in principle, the Christian, by the fact of baptism, is 
released from its empire. 


My brethren, you also died to the Law by the body of Christ, that you 
may belong to him, who is risen again from the dead, and to bring forth 
fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, stirred 
by the Law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 
But now we are loosed from the Law and dead to the Law wherein we 
were held [captive], we serve [God] in newness of spirit and not in the 
oldness of the letter.’ 


If the details of this text give room for discussions, the 
general meaning is not open to doubt. At baptism the 
Christian ‘“‘ dies to the Law,” which is no more anything to 


1 Rom. vii, 4-6. See Vol. 1, pp. 226-7, for the general sense of the passage. 

(a) Verse 4 (Ltaqgue et vos mortificati estis legit per corpus Christi) is 
directly connected with verse 1 (lex in homine dominatur quanto tempore vivit), 
from which it draws the conclusion (stague): ‘‘ You no longer live, for you 
are dead mystically in Christ ; therefore you are dead to the Law.” Paul 
alludes to baptism, which grafts us into the death of Christ, or into the dying 
Christ (Rom. vi, 3-5). The Jody of Christ is, therefore, the mystical body 
into which baptism incorporates us. The physical death of Christ also kills 
the Law objectively (Col. ii, 14; Eph. ii, 14, 15), but, if we except baptism, 
it does not cause us to die personally to the Law. 

(6) There is a notable difference in verse 6 between the Vulgate (unc 
autem soluti sumus a lege mortis, in qua detinebamur) and the best attested 
original text (vuvl 8& xarnpyijOnuev amd Tod vdpou, drofavdrres ev @ KaTEl- 
xéueba). Instead of dofavdvres the translator reads rod Bavarov. How- 
ever, both readings affirm the capital point—namely, the Christian’s liberty 
in relation to the Law. In the Greek phrase droBavdvres ev & xaretyopeda 
the antecedent of the relative is understood : “‘ being dead (¢o fat) in or by 
which you were held (captive),’” and the commentators ask whether this 
antecedent which is understood denotes the Law itself (as we have supposed 
in our translation) or the old man subject to the Law. The meaning of the 
phrase is not seriously affected by this controversy. 


224 |§ THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


him; if he was formerly a Jew, the Law loses all its power 
over him; if he was a pagan, the Law can no more make any 
claim upon him. Baptism, in fact, is a mystical death in 
which we are united to the dying Christ. Now, death, which 
is the end of past obligations, extinguishes, therefore, our 
debt ; and thus the Law of Moses will have no more claim to 
urge against us. This is also the thought hidden in the 
enigmatical passage: “I, through the Law, am dead to the 
Law. ... I am crucified with Christ.” We can easily 
understand that the fact of being crucified with Jesus Christ 
is a death to the Law. St Paul has familiarized us with this 
idea; but how “through the Law am I dead to the Law”? 
Is there a connection between these words and the following 
sentence, and in that case is it a question of the ideal union 
with Christ crucified on Calvary, or of the mystical union 
with him in baptism? Whatever explanation is given of this 
obscure text, it remains certain that if, as is impossible, the 





(c) The great majority of exegetes think that the allegory of marriage is 
continued in verses 4-6; that in u¢ s¢tzs alterzus (verse 4) it is necessary to 
understand vz77 and not domini ; and that fructificare (verses 4 and 5) indicates 
the fecundity of the husband and wife. However, some good modern commen- 
tators, reverting to the explanation of Origen and Chrysostom, are of the 
opinion that the allegory is ended, that the idea of marriage with the risen 
Jesus is not suitable here, that in mortificati estis legi per corpus Christi, 
ut setts altertus it is necessary to understand domint# (cf. Rom. vi, 6), and that 
the fruits are those spoken of above (Rom. vi, 21, 22: liberati a peccate, servi 
autem factt Deo, habetis fructum). Verse 6 (soluti sumus a lege... tta ut 
serviamus), where the idea of service is clearly substituted for that of marriage, 
is strongly in favour of their exegesis. 


1 Gal. ii, 18: «& yap d& KxaréAvoa 18. St enim quae destruxt, tlerum 
Taira mdAw oixodoud, mapaBaryy aedifico: praevaricatorem me con- 
€“avTov auviacTave’ stetuo. 

> AY AY P>) A 4 5 > £) ° 7 

19. €yw yap dia vopov vouw améBavov 19. Ego enim per legem, legi mor- 
¢ ~ A - . . 
iva Ged Chow: Xpiot@ ovveotavpwyar. tuus sum,ut Deovivam .. . Christo 

confixus sum cruct. 


The ideas of this passage are closely connected with one another (notice 
yap twice), and the difficulty is to present a coherent exposition of them. 
Verse 18 is connected with the preceding one, of which it gives the proof (ydp). 
Paul has just said : ‘‘ If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, we ourselves 
also are found sinners, is Christ then the minister of sin? God forbid !” 
Verse 18 furnishes the reason of this absit: ‘“ Far be it! for (on the contrary) 
if I rebuild what I have destroyed (in proclaiming necessary to salvation a 
Law which I have recognized as useless) I make myself a prevaricator ’— 
that is to say, a violator (zapaBaryv) of the Law. Why? Verse 19 informs 
us: “ For I through the Law am dead to the Law”? To’ live again to the 
Law is, therefore, to go against the intentions of the Law; it is to violate it. 
No doubt it can be asked how, through the Law, Paul is dead to the Law. 
As it is impossible to translate : “‘ Through the Law of the Gospel I am dead 
to the Law of Moses,” seeing that one cannot give to the Law in this ex- 
pression 51a véyou véuw two such different meanings, the most reasonable 
reply will be that of St Augustine and St Chrysostom : “ Through the Law 
which led me to Christ, and showed him to me (Gal. iii, 24: 6 véyos 
matvaywyos eis Xptordv), I am dead to the Law which had no more reason 
for existing after it had fulfilled this offiee.” 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 


Mosaic Law were not abrogated for everyone, it would be so 
for the Christian. 

Besides the death of the Christian to the Law and what 
may be called the natural death of the Law, which had 
become decrepit through age, there is a violent death of the 
Law which St Paul describes in two passages of remark- 
able force. The two texts offer great analogies of thought 
and expression, though with profound divergences, which 
are explained by the different purpose the author has in 
each. The fundamental thought is the same: the pagans, 
formerly buried in their sins, owe to the abolition of the Law 
the fact that they have been made alive in Christ. But the 
abolition of the Law is presented to the Colossians as the 
deliverance from an odious and crushing, yoke, while to 
the Ephesians it is portrayed as the cessation of past dis- 
cords and a pledge of union between the two sections of the 
new humanity; for the Epistle to the Colossians wishes to 
establish Christian liberty under the sole mediation of Christ, 
and the Epistle to the Ephesians has for its object to show 
the perfect equality of the elements which compose his 
mystical body. The picture drawn in this latter Epistle is 
one of solemn and tragic grandeur. Here is the slightly 
paraphrased translation of it. 


225 


Remember that formerly you peeew in the flesh, treated as uncir- 
cumcised by those who are called circumcised [and who are so] in the 
flesh by the hand of man, [remember] that at that time you were without 
Christ, excluded from the theocracy of Israel, strangers to the covenants 
of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 

But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly afar off have been 
made nigh by the blood of Christ. 

For he is our Peace, who hath made of the two [peoples] one, havin 
broken down the wall of partition, [the cause of] the enmity, and destroye 
in his [sacrificed] flesh the law of commandments [consisting of many] 
ordinances, in order to form in himself one new man with the two 
[peoples] which he has pacified, and to reconcile them both in one body, 
by the cross, destroying the enmity by it. 

And he came to announce peace to you who were afar off, and peace 
[also] to those who were near; for by him we both have access to the 
Father in one and the same Spirit.’ 





1 Eph. ii, 13, 14, 15, 16: 


13. Nuvi 8¢ év Xptord "Inaod dpeis of 13. Nunc autem in Christo Jesu 


mote évres paxpay eyevnOnre eyyds ev 
T® atuatt too Xptorod. 

14. Atros ydp éotw 7 eiphvn hud, 
6 moujoas Ta apddrepa ev Kal 7d 
pecdrotyor Tod dpaypod Avoas, Ti 
€xOpayv, ev TH capkt avrod, 

15. TOV vopov TAY evrorAdy ev Sdypadt 
Katapyjoas iva tovs dvo «rion €v avT@ 
els Eva xawov dvOpwrov roy etpirny, 


II. 


vos, gut aliguando eratts longe, facts 
estis prope in sanguine Christs. 

14. [pse entm est pax nostra, qut 
fectt utrague unum, et medium 
parietem maceriae solvens, tnimictttas 
in carne sua: 

15. legem mandatorum decretis 
evacuans, ut duos condat in semetipso 
in unum novum hominem, factens 


pacem, 
15 


226 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The thought presented by this sentence, so full of sub- 
clauses, is, on the whole, quite simple. The Apostle con- 
ceives of the two peoples, whose reunion will form the 
Church, the Jews and the Gentiles, as separated from each 
other by an insurmountable barrier and animated by an irre- 
concilable hostility against each other. The barrier is the 
Law ; the cause of the hostile sentiments is again the Law. 
In fact, the Law gave to the Jews all the privileges, consist- 
ing of Messianic hopes, theocracy, divine covenants, and the 
knowledge of the true God. Being strangers to all this, the 
Gentiles were treated with contempt by the children of 
the circumcision ; and what was still more serious, they were 
without Christ, without God, and without hope. They were 


16. xal droxararadAdén rovs dudo- 16. ef veconciliet ambos in uno 
tépous ev évi odpart TH Oe Sa Tob corpore, Deo per crucem, interficiens 
oraupod, dmoxreivas THY ExOpav ev avT@. inimicitias in semetipso. 

A. Contrast between the two states of the converted Pagans.—Formerly 
(ii, 12: 7@ Kaip@ €xeivw) deprived as they were of Christ (ywpis Xpicrod), 
they were: (a) banished from the theocracy of Israel and its religious 
privileges (amnorpiwpévor tis aodtretas rob ’IopayA); (4) strangers to the 
covenants of the promise and to the blessings that came from them (£évoe 
tav diabnxav tis émayyeAlas); (c) without hope, since the divine promises 
did not concern them directly (€Amida pt) Exovres) ; (2) without God in the 
world, since the gods whom they worshipped were nothing (deo & r@ 
xdopm). Nor is this all: (e) they were formerly (ii, 11: woré) the uncircum- 
cised, treated with disdain by the children of the carnal circumcision (ot 
Aeydpevor axpoBvotia bro ris Aeyouevns meptrouys ev capKi xetporortrov). 
— Vow, on the contrary (vi 5€), being united to Christ Jesus (ev Xpuor@ 
"Inood) : (2) they have been brought near to the true Israel in such a way 
as to make only one body with it (ii, 13: eyernOnre éyyus) ; 0?) they are the 
fellow-citizens of the saints and of the family of God (ii, 17: €oré oupoAtras 
Tav dyiwy Kai otxeiot ro6 Geo); (c) they have obtained peace with God 
and with the Jews. Thus the words of Isaias (Ivii, 19) and of Micheas (v, 4) 
are verified. 

B. Peace brought to the Gentiles by the Messtah.—What peace is here 
in question? Peace with God, or peace between the parties constituting 
the Church? Haupt (Meyer’s Kommentar’,) energetically defends the 
first meaning for two main reasons. Nothing in the context, he says, makes 
one think of a conflict between the Jews and Greeks ; in what precedes it is 
said that the Gentiles were afar off from Israel, but. that does not imply 
hostility ; in what follows it is a question of umton, and this proves that they 
were indeed separated, but not that they were at war. Moreover, Jesus Christ 
came “‘ to preach peace to you who were afar off and peace to them who were 
nigh ”’ (ii, 17); the repetition of the word “‘ peace”? denotes a distributive 
significance ; it is not a relative and reciprocal peace, but an absolute peace 
which is preached on the one hand to the Jews and on the other to the Greeks. 
—These reasons have some force, but they are not decisive. Haupt is 
compelled to regard the word “‘ enmity ” (r7v €y8pav), mentioned in verse 16 
and.which completely spoils his thesis, as interpolated. Moreover xat 
amoxataMafy rods audorépovs can be understood only as referring to a 
mutual reconciliation between the two peoples ; now reconciliation presupposes 
a previous state of hostility, to which Christ “ our peace’? puts an end.— 
We have, however, to ask ourselves whether we are obliged to choose between 
two interpretations. When the Apostle, following the prophet, says that 
Christ is our peace, can we not give the word “‘ peace’”’ its most extensive 
meaning, which will subsequently be limited, according to the needs of the 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 227 


far removed from the Jews in every way, and the reciprocal 
hostility which reigned between them increased the distance. 

The idea which pervades the mind of Paul, as he writes 
these lines, is God’s plan to form with these heterogeneous 
elements one family, one house, which shall be the Church, 
and one moral person, one body, which shall be the mystical 
Christ. At the same time, he is haunted by two scriptural 
texts, which are strikingly related to his subject: one from 
Micheas, predicting that the Messiah will be peace—that is 
to say, the supreme peace-maker; the other from Isaias, 
announcing that the Messiah will bring peace to those who 





context, to a peace with God or to a peace between the hostile sections of 
humanity? The peace with God is indeed the condition of the other. 
Ewald in his Commentary (Zahn’s collection) proposes this explanation, which 
seems to us satisfactory in every particular. 

C. Destruction of the Law, the condttion of untty.—In order to bring 
together what was afar off and to unite what was separated, it was necessary 
to break down the wall of separation, to form a whole out of the incongruous 
elements, and to pacify men with one another and with God._(a) God breaks 
down the wall of separation—that ts to say, the Law and the baad 
possessed by Israel. The phrase xai 76 peodrorxov tot dpaypod Avoas, THY 
€xpav, ev 7TH capxt adroo tov vdéuov trav evroAdy ev ddypact Karapyjaas 
has been taken in at least four ways, but the best exegetes rightly agree that 
only one interpretation is acceptable, although it is not without some difficulty. 
It is that which makes of rijv €x8pav an apposition with ro peodrotyov and 
sees in €v TH capxt avrod a circumstantial complement of Avcas. The 
meaning then is : ‘‘ Having in his flesh destroyed the intermediary wall which 
served as a barrier—that is to say, the enmity—having abolished the law of 
commandments [consisting] of decrees.” The word pecdrotyov is extremely 
rare, but presents no difficulty as regards the sense. The genitive rod ¢paypod 
is a genitive of apposition : ‘‘ the intermediary wall consisting in a barrier’’: 
¢payyudos signifies properly ‘‘an enclosure, a palisade,” and the idea of 
separation belongs rather to peodrotxov. This barrier was all that isolated 
the Hebrew people and kept them from contact with foreigners; the Law, 
religious privileges, the national, chauvinistic spirit, all provoked and fo- 
mented the hatred of.other peoples and could be called figuratively ‘‘ enmity ”’ 
(€x8pa) for the same reason as the Saviour is called “ peace.’’ The Greek 
verb Avewv, “to destroy,” is taken equally well with retyos (or pecdroryov) or 
with €y$pa. We have just seen that the wall of separation (eodrovxor) is more 
general than the Law ; but the abrogation of the Law itself deserved special 
mention : it is reduced to nothing (xarapyetvy means exactly “to render vain, 
nothing, without effect, to enervate, to deprive of its force”). The expression 
Tov vépov tav evroAdv ev Sdéypaow offers a certain difficulty. It is certain 
that the Law is the Mosaic Law; the genitive r@v <vroAdv is a genitive of 
apposition : “‘ the Law consisting in precepts, in commandments.” As for 
Séypa, it signifies ‘‘ decree, peremptory order’? (Luke i, 2; Acts xvi, 4; 
xvii, 7). But it is impossible to join év 8éypacw with xarapyjoas and to 
understand it in an instrumental sense, as Chrysostom and his school with 
Theodore of Mopsuestia do: “ having abolished by 47s decrees [by the Law of 
the Gospel] the Law of commandments [the Mosaic Law].”’—(6) Unification 
of the incongruous elements. (a) They are both made nigh to Christ and 
consequently nigh to each other (verse 13) ; (8) both form henceforth only one 
being in the moral order (verse 14: 6 mowjoas 7a dudorepa ev; (y) the moral 
person thus constituted is “‘a new man”? (verse 15); (8) the union is effected in 
the mystical body of Christ (verse 16), of which the faithful, both Jews and 
Gentiles, are the living members. 


228 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


are near and to those who are afar off. How will this double 
prophecy be accomplished? By eliminating all the causes of 
hatred and discord, by annihilating the distance separating 
the two peoples, and by breaking down the barrier which 
divided them and which was none other than the Mosaic 
Law with its burdensome and hateful privileges. Jesus 
Christ accomplished all this by blending the two peoples into 
one in the identity of his mystical body. 

The old legislation had crushed the Jews under its intoler- 
able weight, and for the Gentile Christians it is a conspicuous 
favour that they are freed from it. They owe it to Christ : 


And you, when you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of 
your flesh, God hath quickened together with him [Christ], forgiving us 
all our offences ; blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was 
{drawn up] against us ; and he hath taken the same away, fastening it to 
the Cross. 


It is perfectly certain that ‘‘ the authentic deed, consisting 
of commandments,’’ denotes the Law of Moses. This 
document was ‘“‘ against ’’ the Jews because it imposed upon 
them numerous and rigorous duties and exposed them, in 


* Col. ii. 13,14; Vos cum mortut essetis in delictts et praeputio carnts, 

13. ovvelworolnoey buds odv airs, 13. conuivificavit cum illo, donans 
xaptodpevos Hpiv mdvra ta mapantw- vobss omnia delicta ; 

aja, 
‘ 14. efareibas To Kal? hudv yeupd- 14. delens quod adversus nos erat 
ypagov tois Sdypacw 6 hv vrevavriov chtrographum decreti, quod erat con- 
nuiv, Kat avTo fpxey €x Tod péoov, trarium nobis, et ipsum tulit de medio, 
mpoonAwaas avTo TH oTauvp@. offigens tllud cruct. 

A. Subject of the phrase.—It is God, not Christ: (2) This appears from 
the parallel passage, Eph. ii, 5.—(6) God is always the subject of such verbs 
as ouveyelpew, ovCworoteivy, which denote a mystical identification of the 
Christian with (avy) Christ.—(c) It is grammatically much simpler to derive 
the understood subject from rod @eot than from the pronoun avrdv of the 
preceding phrase.—(d) The last words of verse 12: gui suscttavit illum a 
mortuis have evidently God as subject, but the xat duds which follows shows 
that the same subject persists, since the object is placed first: ‘God hath 
raised his Son from the dead and you also hath he quickened.””—(e) The only 
reason for regarding Christ as the subject of the phrase is that verse 15 would 
not be appropriate to God ; but we shall show elsewhere the worthlessness 
of this reason. ; 

B. Meaning of the personal pronouns.—The pronouns vpas, tudv, denote 
clearly the converted pagans ; we might think that the pronouns 7jyiv, quar, 
which follow them designate by contrast the converted Jews. But it is 
preferable to understand thereby all Christians, for the blessings enumerated 
(the pardon of sins and even the abolition of the Law) concern them all, 
although in a rather different way. Perhaps the Apostle changes the person 
because the Jews are more dtrectly interested in the Law’s abrogation. 

C. Meaning of x«pdypafov.—This word signifies any kind of “ auto- 
graph,” particularly a “‘ note signed by a debtor who acknowledges that he 
owes a sum of money and promises to pay it back”’ (Tob. v, 3; ix, 5). Some 
commentators regard fhe solemn acceptation of the Hebrew people (Ex. xxiv, 
3; xxvii, 14-26) as the stgnature set to the Law and giving it its validity ; 
but it is not necessary to push the metaphor so far; the meaning authentic 
deed is sufficient. All are now of the opinion that 76 xa” sjudv yeipdypadov 


: 


| 


IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF REDEMPTION 229 


case of violation of the Law, to severe penalties; it was 
‘‘ contrary ’’ to them for the same reasons, and also because 
it retarded the accomplishment of the Messianic promises. 
It was also no less contrary to the Gentiles whom it excluded 
from the theocracy. Thus, ‘‘ the code of the command- 
ments ’’ is annulled ; God causes it to disappear in order that 
no one can claim its authority to proceed against the disciples 
of Christ ; he nails it to the Saviour’s cross, as if to punish it 
for its misdeeds and to give more brilliancy to its abrogation. 
The Law, which carried within itself so many germs of 
decay, here expires by a violent death, and its tyranny comes 
to an end: ‘‘ Let no man judge you in regard to meat or 
drink, or in respect of a festival day, or of the new moon, 
or of the sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come.’’* 
The Mosaic Law concludes its dramatic career on the cross; 
it has killed Christ, and Christ kills it in his turn. 





can designate only the Mosaic Law; this appears clearly from the parallel 

assage (Eph. ii, 15: tov vépov ra&v evroddv ev Soypaow). The dative rots 
éypacw, after xewpdypagov, is rather difficult; some make it depend on 
xaé’ *pav (which was against us dy its decrees) ; others on 6 7v Urevavtiov nuiv 
(which was contrary to us dy its decrees) ; the simplest construction and the 
one most conformable to Eph. ii, 15 is to make it depend on the participle 
yeypoppevov, virtually contained in xepdypadov (the deed written zm 
decrees). It is known that the Greeks (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Severianus, 
Chrysostom and his school) as well as St Jerome, Estius and others, make it 
depend on e€aAeifas (having suppressed the act of the Law by the Gospel’s 
decrees), which grammatically is without difficulty, but meets with objections 
of another kind: (2) The parallel passage Eph. ii, 15 ; (6) the impossibility 
of understanding 7a Sdéyyara, without more explanations, as the Gospel 
teaching ; (c) the conclusion of the Apostle (ii, 30 : rt Soyparileobe ;) which 
supposes the abolition of the déyyara. 

D. Treatment inflicted on the Law.—The Law is effaced, put aside, nailed 
to the Cross: (a) Effaced. The word éefarcipew signifies “to wipe away 
(tears), ‘‘ to efface”’ (for example, an autograph, in smoothing down the 
wax of the tablet with the other end of the stylus) ; if it is a question of 
a law, “to abrogate, to abolish.” The aorist participle éfareibas gram- 
matically might be simultaneous with yaptodpevos. The meaning would 
then be: “having pardoned us all our sins by abrogating the Law”; 
but that is scarcely intelligible. It is, therefore, better to give the second 
aorist its relation of priority : ‘“‘ having pardoned us all our sins after having 
abolished the Law.’ There are in this case two distinct benefits, and the 
second is the condition and the preparation of the first.—(4) Put aside. The 
expression aipew éx Tod pécou simply means “‘ to make disappear ”’ that which 
is annoying, that which is an obstacle, that which interferes. The idea that 
this obstacle exists Between two persons is not expressed. The perfect tense 
#pxev indicates that the result still persists—(c) Matled to the Cross. The 
Cross is that of Jesus Christ ; hence the article. God by a sort of vindictive 
revenge nails to the Cross of his Son the Law which has contributed to crucify 
him. We must not weaken this sublime idea by supposing that it was cus- 
tomary to abolish laws by piercing them by a nail, a hypothesis which has, 
moreover, no historical foundation. 

2 Col. ii, 16. See Vol. I, p. 282. 















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BOOK V 
THE CHANNELS OF REDEMPTION 


231 





CEUA Barr Rag 
FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 


I—JustTIFYING FAITH 


1. Protestant Faith and Catholic Faith. 2. Nature of Faith. 3. Object 
of Faith. 4. Value of Faith. 


as T is very difficult to know what the reformers of 
the sixteenth century understood by the faith that 
justifies, for we find among them no precise defini- 
tions, and especially no uniform notions of it. Their 
texts, when compared, leave a strong impression of 
obscurity and incoherence. The leaders of Protestantism 
were indeed agreed in denying that a formless faith is a true 
faith; but as they wished to eliminate the intellectual element 
from the act of faith, while nevertheless leaving it certitude, 
their embarrassment in trying to define their special faith 
was extreme. If they said with Calvin that faith is ‘‘ an un- 
shaken and certain knowledge of divine good will towards 
us,’’ they had to make long commentaries in order to explain 
that such an act proceeds from the heart and not from the 
mind, and they did not know where to locate the reality of 
this faith, the object of which, at the moment when it was 
perceived as existing, did not yet exist. If they preferred 
Luther’s definition: ‘‘a certain and profound confidence in 
the divine goodness and in the grace manifested and known 
by the Word of God,’’ it was impossible to say how this con- 
fidence can be certain, unless it be admitted that it is itself 
preceded by an act of intellectual faith. 
“We have no right to expect any greater clearness and 
precision from modern Protestants. The majority, even of 
those who might be thought disposed to emancipate them- 
selves from Lutheran orthodoxy, always consider confidence 
as the unique or principal element of faith. We note, how- 
ever, among many of them, an anxiety to avoid what in the 
Protestant conception is too shocking or openly contrary to 
Scripture. “Thus B. Weiss unites confidence with intellectual 
adhesion and understands by confidence, especially the kind 
of confidence shown to God by believing in his word; it is 
the pius credulitatis affectus of Catholic theologians. On 
the other Hand, certain rationalists maintain without hesita- 
tion the radical ideas of the first reformers, and thereby 
expose the fundamental absurdity of them. In the opinion 
of Baur, for example, ‘‘ faith, as a principle of justification, 
is the persuasion, founded on Jesus Christ, that what is not, 
233 


234 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


nevertheless is’’; and he asks with amazement what 
influence such an act can have upon our salvation. This, 
indeed, sets us thinking, for it is the pure and simple denial 
of the principle of contradiction. But the strain of absurdity 
continues: ‘‘ Faith,’”’ according to Fricke, ‘‘is a receptive 
seizing of something which is, however, first rendered 
possible by the reception of grace prepared in God before 
any reception !’’ What sphinx could solve this enigma? It 
is not to be wondered at that the Protestant notion of faith 
is wanting in clearness; for, according to the author of the 
definition which has just been read, the thought of Paul is so 
profound that very few men have comprehended it, and before 
Luther it had been wholly misunderstood for more than a 
thousand years. According to Harnack, the first to under- 
stand it was the heretic Marcion, and even he did so very 
imperfectly. 
_ In contrast to these fluctuations of interpretation, let us 
state the unchanging doctrine of -the Catholic Church, thus 
formulated in the council of the Vatican: ‘‘ Faith is a super- 
natural virtue, by which, through the influx and with the aid 
of grace, we believe those things which have been revealed, 
to be true, not because of their intrinsic truth, accessible to 
the natural powers of reason, but because of the authority of 
God himself who reveals them and who can neither be 
deceived nor deceive us.’’. The Council of Trent declares 
that ‘we are justified by faith, because faith is the origin, 
foundation and the root of all justification,’? and that ‘‘ we 
are justified freely because nothing that precedes justifica- 
tion, neither faith nor works, can merit the grace of justifica- 
tion.’’? Faith is the origin of our salvation because it marks 
the first disposition towards it, and because without it the 
sinner can really neither hope, nor repent, nor love God 
sincerely. Faith is the foundation of our salvation, because 
all the rest is based upon it; if it falls, the entire structure 
crumbles with it, while it is able to maintain itself amid the 
ruin of the other virtues. Faith is also the root of our salva- 
tion ; not because it is the spontaneous and infallible germ of 
the other supernatural dispositions, but because it concurs, 
with divine assistance, in producing and sustaining them. 
Before examining how faith justifies, let us study St Paul 
on the nature, object, and value of justifying faith. 


2. In this analysis three errors of method are to be avoided. 
The first is to explain biblical usage by profane usage; Chris- 
tian faith and pagan faith are entirely different; they have 
not a common standard of measurement; the classics indeed 
furnished the sacred writers with the word “‘ faith,’’ but 


Conetl. Vatican., Sess. iii, cap. 3; Concsl. Trident., Sess, vi, cap. 8, 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 235 


nothing more.' A second danger is to take as a point of 
departure the etymology of the Greek word. When the 
apostles—and before them the Septuagint—adopted this 
word, the idea of faith had behind it a long history; being 
the product of a different race and civilization, its Greek 
etymology throws but little light upon it.” Finally, the last 
danger to be avoided is to proceed from the notion of 
‘‘faith’’ to the notion of ‘‘believing.’’ The ' reverse 
procedure is necessary; for in Hebrew, where the concept 
of Christian faith is elaborated, the grammatical derivation, 
in conformity with the logical evolution of the idea, passes 
from the verb ‘‘ to believe’’ to the substantive ‘‘ faith ”’ ; 
which hardly ever assumes the religious meaning which the 
verb ‘‘ to believe ’’ usually possesses. * 

Every attentive reader is struck by the fact that St Paul, 
as the editor of the Epistle to the Hebrews, likes to connect 
the Christian faith with the faith of the Old Testament, and 
seems to make no difference between them; a fact all the 
more curious from the circumstance that in the Old Testa- 
ment the role of faith seems at first quite obliterated; one 
hopes in God, obeys him, fears him, loves him, but never 
thinks of esteeming it meritorious to believe in him, for to 
refuse to do that is the error of a ‘‘fool’’ only. Faith is 
scarcely ‘mentioned save in exceptional cases where it has 
obstacles to overcome, doubts to surmount or serious duties 
to fulfil; then, it is true, it is the principal virtue, just as its 
opposite, unbelief, is the most odious crime. The salvation 
or the ruin of the people depended on its faith: ‘‘ If you will 


1 (z) Among the classics, the active meaning is rare and of comparatively 
recent date (later than Thucydides) ; the passive sense is much more common ; 
one says miorw or miores diddvat, rovetofat, déyeoPat, to give or receive 
guarantees, pledges (oaths, hostages, etc.). In biblical Greek the contrary 
is true; the passive meaning is quite exceptional—(g) In profane Greek, 
niorts and morevew very rarely express a religious act, and even this is 
only a purely intellectual act: miorts Oedv is not faith in the gods, but either 
the gods called upon to witness, or the belief in the existence of the gods, 
founded on general opinion. Inthe Greek of the New Testament, the meaning 
is almost always religious: miorts @eod, Xpiorod is faith in God or Christ 
founded on their testimony.—(c) In profane Greek aiorts and mMmOTEvELY, 
taken absolutely, signify nothing; in biblical Greek they express a complete 
notion, which need not be determined by an object or govern anything. 

4 TIiorts comes from meidew, “ to persuade or seek to persuade” (2 Cor. 
v, 11; Gal.i, 10); in the middle voice relGecbat, “ to let oneself be persuaded 
or convinced,” in the second perfect wemoévat, “to be convinced, to have 
confidence”; memoibds and memoinots coming from memouBévat, follow its 
meaning. 

2 Iorevew (from mtorés) is of relatively recent date; miorts and mores 
are derived in a parallel manner from zei#ew, of which they are the noun 
and the verbal adjective. In Hebrew, on the contrary, the noun and the 
adjective are derived from the verb; the latter is much more employed, 
Mix being very rare in the sense of faith (the only certain example is 


Habac. ii, 4). 


236 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


not believe, you shall not continue.’’! ‘‘ Believe in the Lord 
your God and you shall be secure.’’? Such was the faith of 
Abraham, and of the Ninivites, the faith of which Habacuc 
speaks, and the faith of Israel at the time of the flight 
from Egypt: ‘‘ They believed the Lord and in Moses, his 
servant.’’? Everywhere faith is stated as an assent to the 
Word of God or of his prophet, but the intellectual element 
is rarely isolated; there is almost always added to it a senti- 
ment of security,. confidence, abandonment, obedience, and 
filial love; the adhesion of the mind produces a thrill of the 
heart. 

In passing from the Old Testament to the New, we 
measure at a glance the road we have traversed. Faith is 
no more pointed out as an exceptional fact, it is henceforth 
the normal attitude of the Christian; the two words “ faith” 
and “‘ to believe’’ are found on every page in almost equal 
Proportions; the profane sense, completely eliminated from 
the substantive, tends to disappear also from the verb ; 
finally, the two terms have acquired a technical sense which 
allows us to employ them absolutely ; faith is the acceptance 
of the Gospel, and to believe is to profess Christianity. * 
The fulness of meaning renders the analysis of the Christian 
faith difficult; however, a careful comparison of the texts 
suggests to us the following remarks. Faith is not a pure 
intuition, a mystical tendency towards an object more 
suspected than known; it presupposes preaching: Fides ex 
auditu ; it is the yielding of the mind to divine testimony.5— 
Faith is opposed to sight, both as regards the object known 
and the manner of knowing; one is immediate and intuitive, 
the other takes place through an intermediate agent. ®&— 
Nevertheless, faith is not blind; it is ready to give a reason 
for itself, and aspires always to more clearness.7—It is closely 
united, on the one hand, to charity and hope, with which it 
forms an inseparable trio, and, on the other hand, to 
obedience and to the conversion of the heart.’—Faith, how- 
ever firm and unshakable it is in its adhesion, has neverthe- 


PelSviinOu C/A xin sto: 

* 2 Paral. xx, 20. * Ex. xiv, 31. 

* See Note V.° 

* Rom. x, 17 (3 aioris && dxofs); Gal. iii, 2-5 (dxo) aictews); 1 Thess 
ii, 13 (Adyos dxojs). 

* 2 Cor. v, 7: dia miorews yap repimarotper, od Sa etSous. 

7 2 Cor. iv, 4-6. (The Gospel is a light [¢wriopds], and on the contrary 
it is unbelief that is b/d); 1 Cor. viii, 1 (faith is perfectly compatible with 
knowledge) ; Phil. iii, 8-10 (faith and knowledge go together). St Paul asks 
God for knowledge (yvdots or émtyywors) for his neophytes : Eph. i, 17, 18; 
iv, 13, 14; Col. i, 9; ii, 2, etc. The true Christian must be ready to give a 
reason for his faith, 1 Pet. iii, 15; and 2 Pet. i, 16-21 present some of the 
motives which make faith reasonable. 

* For the trio, faith, hope and charity, see p. 332.—For obedience (Rom. 


i, 5), ef. Vol. I, p. 174. 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 237 


less degrees, and can increase in intensity and perfection.*— 
Finally, being derived from grace, it possesses an intrinsic 
value which renders it agreeable to God.” Before examining 
whence its value comes, let us state its object. 


3. It is necessary to distinguish in the act of faith the 
formal object—the motive for believing—and the material 
object, to which faith is directed. That which incites the 
mind to adhesion is always the testimony of God, whether it 
is produced directly or comes through the intervention of the 
authorized preachers of revelation. God himself spoke to 
Abraham and Moses; he speaks to us by the prophets and 
apostles; but this difference in the manner of transmission 
changes nothing in the divine testimony itself: ‘‘ When you 
had received of us the word of God, you received it not as 
the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God.’’* 
The Gospel is not an invention of the apostles, for they 
‘‘ have not received it of man, but by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ.’’* who is Wisdom incarnate. Thenceforward the 
word of the Gospel is the word of God, or simply the Word, 
and to believe God’s messengers is to believe God himself. 

While the formal object does not change, the material 


1 y Cor. iii, 1, 2 (childhood in the faith); 2 Cor. x, 15 (crescentis fdez 
vestrae) ; Col. ii, 7 ; 2 Thess. i, 3 (supercrescit fides vestra), etc 

* Eph. ii, 8. See Vol. I, p. 177, and Vol. II, p. 240. 

* 1 Thess. li, 13: Peaabarres Adyov dxofs map’ nuav Tob Ocod ébéfacbe 
ob Adbyov dvOpdmuv GAAa xababs eorw ddAnDds Adyov Beod, ds kal evepyetrat év 
Spiv rots morevovow. It is difficult to render well all the shades of meaning 
in this phrase: (a) mapoAapBdvew does not signify merely “ to receive,” 
but “to receive a thing transmitted by someone”? (mapd) ; déxeo8ar is also 
not simply “to receive’ but “to welcome, to accept.”—(b) o Adyos axo7js 
map’ tpcav 700 @eod forms one single complex expression : axojs is a modal 
genitive, “the word of hearing ”—that is, the word which is heard, which 
reaches the mind only by passing through the ear; rod @eod is a genitive 
of author or origin, “the word which comes from God, which is spoken by 
him’; wap’ jydv is not an object of rapaAaBdvres—which would bea pleonasm 
—but a word qualifying 6 Adyos ris axo7s, “the divine word given by hearing, 
which we have transmitted to you.”—(c) édéfacbe ob Adyov avbpumruw adda . . 
Aoyov Geos, “ You have welcomed, accepted, not a word of men (that is, @ 
human word—remark the absence of the definite article), but a word of 
God ” (divine in its origin and nature, since men are only the bearers Of it} 
éd¢tacbe expressing not only the fact of the reception but the persuasion of 
the Thessalonians, the Vulgate rightly translates on ut verbum hominum ; 
yet the Greek is more energetic.—(@) 6s xal evepyetra: refers to Adyov and 
not to @eod, for with the name of a person the active voice of the verb 
évepyeiv is employed (1 Cor. xii, 6; Gal. ii, 8; ili, 5; Phil. ii, 13), while 
with the name of a thing the middle voice is used (Gal. v, 6; Eph. ili, 20; 
Col. i, 29). 

Three corollaries follow from this text: (2) The preaching of the Apostles 
is not a human word, in spite of the human medium, it is a divine word, the 
testimony of God.—(d) Faith is not an intuition of the mind, but the accept- 
ance of a testimony, called Adyos dxofs because it must be offered to man’s 
external senses. Cf. Rom. x, 17; Gal. iii, 2-5.—(c) Faith is not inactive ; 
it works (€vepyetrat) in the hearts of believers. 

* Gal. i, 12. 


238 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


object varies infinitely. It can be concerned with revelation 
as a whole, or with a group of truths, or with a particular 
dogma : ‘‘ If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall 
live also together with Christ.—If thou confess with thy 
mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath 
raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’’1—* If 
we believe that Jesus died and rose again; even so them who 
have slept through Jesus, will God bring with him.’’? Here 
faith is an intellectual adhesion to an historical truth, without 
any accessory idea of confidence or self-abandonment ; never- 
theless, it is genuine Christian faith, since salvation is con- 
nected with it. In fact, however limited the material object 
may be, the formal object remains always the same, and this 
it is which specifies the kind of faith. 

It is when it is not expressed that the material object is 
most comprehensive. St Paul likes to call the faithful 
‘‘ believers ’’ because faith is the vast and universal senti- 
ment which epitomizes best the Christian character. 
‘Faith’? is the profession of the whole Gospel, and is 
also, objectively, the Gospel in its broadest sense. In a 
word, ‘‘ to believe ’’ is to be a disciple of Christ; for, besides 
the intellectual adhesion, sincere faith implies a tacit and 
essential submission to the duties which Christianity imposes, 

When the object of faith is indicated—aside from certain 
exceptional expressions like ‘‘ faith in the Gospel, faith in 
truth ’’—it is always God or Christ. And then, since the 
material object coincides with the formal object, the notion 
of faith is quite complex. If to believe God (Geo) (a2 Dieu) 
can be only to have faith in his testimony, to believe in God 
adds to this concept some delicate shades of thought, the 
meaning of which is rendered well by the Greek particles. 
To believe in God is not only to believe in his existence, but 
to rest upon him (éri Oe@) as on an immovable support, to 
take refuge in him (éri Oedv) as in a sure place of shelter, to 
tend towards him (eis Ocdv) as to one’s supreme end. 

In recent years it has been denied that ‘‘ the faith of 
Christ is faith towards Christ’’; it is claimed that it is 
the faith which Jesus himself had had during his mortal life. 
Happily, the whole body of theologians and exegetes, 
Protestant as well as Catholic, resisting the enthusiasm 
which ‘a new opinion always excites, however arbitrary it 
may be, continue to see in ‘‘ the faith of Christ’ the faith 
of which Christ is the object on the part of the faithful. ? 

There is no more adequate expression of the justifying 
faith of Paul.* Jesus Christ is not only the plenipotentiary 
of God and the one and only mediator of the new covenant; 
he is, moreover, the epitome of the Gospel, since he is the 

* Rom. vi, 8; x, 9. * 1 Thess. iv, 14. 
* See Note V. * Gal. ii, 16, 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 239 


centre of the scheme of salvation, and all God’s promises are 
fulfilled in him. Hence to preach Christ is to preach the 
Gospel, to confess Christ is to profess the religion which he 
came to found, to believe Christ is to accept him as a 
Saviour, to trust in his meditation and to submit to his law. 
We are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ, and we live in 
the faith of the Son of God,* because this faith, far from 
being confined to the domain of the intellect, is a practical, 
active, obedient faith, which receives its form and merit from 
charity. 


4. Even when stripped of its accidental modes, such as 
confidence and submission to the divine will, the act of faith 
possesses an intrinsic moral value. In fact, it could not 
exist in the simplest form without the pius credulitatis 
affectus by which man voluntarily bows to the authority of 
God and confesses implicitly the truth of his testimony. 
‘‘ Without faith it is impossible to please [God]; for whoso- 
ever cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a 
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’’? We have here 
the most intellectual form of faith, the form most liberated 
from moral conditions, the one with which the will has least 
to do; yet the inspired author affirms that without this faith 
it is impossible to please God, and that with it it is possible 
to do so. A proof of this is Henoch: Scripture says nothing 
of his faith, but renders this testimony in regard to him that 
he pleased God; and our author concludes from it that it is 
by faith that he did so, since without faith we cannot please 
him.* Hence it follows necessarily that faith possesses in 
itself a moral value capable of winning man the divine 
favour. 

Nor is it otherwise with the faith of which Habacuc speaks. 
God said to the prophet: ‘‘ Though the vision tarry, wait 
for it; because it will surely come, it will not fail’’ ; and he 
adds: ‘‘ Behold how he faileth whose soul is not upright, 
but the just shall live by his faith.’’"* The meaning of the 
first clause cannot be determined with certainty ; but three 

1 Gal. ii, 20. 2 Heb. xi, 6. 3 Heb. xi, 5. 

* Habac. ii, 4: MYM INN} PUAN (6 dé Sixavos ex miarews pov peoea 


Septuagint ? 


240 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


things are beyond doubt: there is a contrast between the lot 
of the unbeliever, that of the haughty man who refuses to 
believe in the prophetic vision, and that of the just and pious 
man who has faith in it. Faith consists precisely in believing 
that the prophecy made in God’s name will be fulfilled ; this, 
therefore, is indeed the faith which we have described, a 
steadfast adhesion to the divine word. The fruit of faith is 
the fact that by it the just shall live—that is to say, shall be 
the object of providential preservation. 

For the contemporaries of St Paul, as well as for St Paul 
himself, the faith of Abraham is the typical faith. It avoids 
three defects which would deprive it of its merit and value; 
these are incredulity, doubt, and hesitation. The matter of 
it was difficult, incredible, and, humanly speaking, impossible ; 
yet the patriarch did not give way to incredulity, but, on the 
contrary, believed against all likelihood, and, if it is 
permissible to say so, against all reason: qui contra spem 
in spem credidit.1 He was not checked by inducements to 
doubt—his age, his feeble body, the advanced age of Sarah— 
but he believed with a steadfast, immovable faith: con- 
fortatus est fide. Much more, directing his thoughts im- 
mediately towards him whose truth equals his power, he was 
not troubled for a moment: non haesitavit diffidentia. His 
faith was prompt, steadfast, complete, and' perfect : hence it 
was rewarded; ‘‘ God,’’ says the Scripture, ‘‘ imputed it to 
him for justice.’’ Although there is neither equality nor 
equivalence between faith and justice, it is nevertheless 
absolutely necessary that there should exist a certain propor- 
tion between justice and faith; for that which is nothing is 
not imputed to anything. Moreover, St Paul takes care to 
tell us how agreeable to God the faith of Abraham was, and 
why it received its reward. It is because the patriarch, by 
the steadfastness of his belief, by his implicit acknowledge- 
ment of divine truth, by his confident attitude in regard to 
promises which seemed impossible, and by the promptitude 
of his obedience, had rendered glory to the author of all good: 
dans gloriam Deo. Such is the intrinsic, moral value of faith. 

Not that faith derives this value from itself, nor that man 
can boast of its possession. Even if it is in us and even 
if it is not without our co-operation—since it is a human 
act—the Apostle teaches that in the last analysis it is not 
of us, but of God: ‘‘ By grace you are saved through faith; 
and that not of yourselves, for it is a gift of God—not 
of works, that no man may glory.’’? To be saved at the 


1 Rom. iv, 16-22. See Vol. I, pp. 177f, and 208-9. 

® Eph. ii, 8: 7H yap xdpirl Vee (A) 8. Gratia entm estis salvaté 
ceowopevat did. riorews- per fidem, 

cal toGro otx €£ tuav, Beoh rd (B) et hoc non ex vobts ; Det enim 
dapor donum est, 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 241 


same time by faith and by grace.appears contradictory, and 
would really be so if faith originated in ourselves; but no, 
replies the Apostle, all that is a gift of God; you cannot 
attribute it either to yourselves or to your works. More- 
over, faith is an operation, a product of the Holy Spirit, or, 
as the Apostle again says, a fruit of the Spirit. And it is to 
its supernatural origin that it is indebted for its value. 

We are now in possession of the three elements of Chris- 
tian faith, as St Paul describes it: the intellectual element 
is never absent. In cases where the twofold object, material 
and formal, is clearly evident, we might possibly conceive 





g. ovK €& Epywy, iva yy} Tis Kavyon- (C) 9. non ex operibus, ut nequts 
Tat. glorietur. 

(A) The words éoré ceowopevor, in the perfect, signify ‘‘ you have been 
saved and you are now in the way of salvation.’ Salvation is sometimes 
represented as present, sometimes as past (Tit. iii, 5), sometimes as future 
(Rom. v, 10), sometimes as past and future at the same time (Rom. viii, 24). 
The words 7H ydpir: repeat with greater emphasis verse 5 (xdpiri ¢ora 
ceowopevor, where xdpite was inserted only incidentally and had scarcely 
more than the value of the adverb ydpw or dwpedy, “ gratuitously ”?); here 
7h xdpire refers to the “ riches of the grace” of God (verse 7: 70 umepBaAAov 
mdobros THS ydptTos avrod), who has just been mentioned. The words di 
mtorews determine with: more precision the rq xdptrs which precedes: 
“You are saved by grace, and that by faith, as an instrument of divine grace.”’ 

(B) The method employed by God to “save us gratuitously by faith ”’ 
has for corollaries the impotence of man left to himself (oc non ex vobts) 
and the insufficiency of works (non ex operibus). The hoc (rotro) does not 
refer to faith alone, for it is not clear why St Paul should make use of the 
neuter pronoun; above all, this would make it necessary to put ef hoc non ex 
vobis, Dei donum est in parentheses and to disunite non ex vobis and non ex 
opertbus, which seem closely co-ordinated ; it refers, therefore, to the whole 
idea “‘ salvation by faith.’ Salvation by faith is not of us, it is a gift from God ; 
but if so, then it is absolutely necessary that faith also should be a gift from 
God. The consequence is evident: (2) from the fact that per fidem is only 
an explanation and a definition of gratia ; (6) from the manifest intention 
of the Apostle to refute in advance the possible objection that, if salvation is 
through faith, therefore it comes from us and from our works. The refuta- 
tion is valid only if faith is not from us but from God. It was, therefore, 
right for the second Council of Orange (A.D. 529) to cite this text as a proof 
that the initium fidei is a gift of grace (can. 5). The question is merely to 
know whether St Paul affirms exp/zctt/y that faith is a gift of God, or whether 
he allows himself only to conclude it, by the fact that he establishes an 
equivalence between the formulas “ ¢o be saved by fatth’”’ and “ to be saved 
by grace.’ Most commentators do not express a clear opinion on this point, 
although they are agreed on the main thesis. Thus Corn. a Lapide: Pronomen 
hoc demonstrat non 76 salvati estis, sed r6 per fidem. Quod per fidem salvate 
estis hoc non ex vobis est quia fides non est ex vobis, sed Det donum est. Are 
these words—guta fides non est ex vobis—a conclusion of the interpreter or a 
direct assertion of Paul? 

(C) The question arises whether ut neqguis glorietur expresses the end which 
God purposed, or only the result which he has obtained. As we know that 
God, in establishing justification by faith, wished that man should not be 
able to glory in regard to his salvation (Rom. iii, 27; iv, 2; I Cor. i, 28-31), 
there is no difficulty in giving the preposition w¢ (iva) its final signification, 
which is certainly the most common one. 


1 Gal. v, 22; of. Rom. xii, 3 ; 1 Cor, xii, 9. 
II, 16 


242 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


faith without the co-operation of the will, but never without 
the co-operation of the intelligence. A faith, in which the 
will had no part, would not be a free, meritorious, theological 
faith; yet by an extension of meaning the name of faith 
could be given to it, as is done by St James; a faith in which 
the intelligence has no part is not even conceivable, for all 
faith is a conviction, and every conviction supposes an assent 
of the mind.—A second element of faith is confidence, which 
can be understood in two ways: confidence in the one who is 
speaking, and confidence in the one who is promising. The 
first is inherent in the act of faith; it is very nearly the pius 
credulitatis affectus of the theologians. The other, being 
accidental, is only a modality of the material object, when 
this consists of a present aid-or of a promised benefit : Contra 
spem in spem credidit.—The third element of living faith is 
a twofold obedience: obedience of the mind to the word of 
God evinced by the prompt and steadfast acceptation of the 
divine testimony, and obedience of the heart ready to con- 
form in everything to the divine will so far as it is manifested. 


IJ—JusTIFICATION By FAITH 
1. The Justice of God. 2. How Justice is born of Faith. 


1. The Council of Trent recognizes two meanings in the 
expression ‘‘ justice of God’’: the justice by which he is just 
and the justice by which he renders us just.!_ Since Ritschl’s 
time, several heterodox writers and one or two Catholics, 
contrary to the general opinion, find this distinction illusory ; 
they maintain that the justice of God is always in Scripture, 
and even in St Paul, his intrinsic and inherent justice. What 
must we think of their utterances? 

As a divine attribute, ‘‘ the justice of God is, properly 
speaking, the activity of his holiness in relation to the moral 
part of creation.’’? While his holiness is an absolute 
attribute, God’s justice appears in the Bible as a relative 
attribute. The just God rises to punish guilty Israel or to 
destroy sin; he seats himself on his throne in order to cast 
down the oppressor and to do justice to the oppressed : 


(Jahve) put on justice as a breast-plate, and a helmet of salvation 
upon his head ; 





* Sess. vi, cap. 7: Unica formalis causa [justificationis] est justitia Det, 
non qua tpse justus est, sed qua nos justos factt. We do not claim that this 
incidental phrase settles the question of exegesis. 

* J. Monod, in Encycl. des sciences relig., vol. vii, p. 562. This other 
definition (p. 561) is a less happy one : “‘ The justice of God is that perfection, 
by virtue of which he wishes in an absolute and unchangeable manner all 
that is conformable to the good, that is to say, to the sovereign law of his 
being.’ 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 243 


he put on the garments of vengeance and was clad with zeal, as with 
a cloak. 

As were man’s deeds, so was his revenge: 

wrath to his adversaries and reprisals to his enemies; . . . 

I will set judgement in weight and justice in measure." 


But the justice of God is not only the vindictive justice 
which punishes crime, nor the distributive justice which 
rewards every man according to his merits; it is sometimes— 
especially in the Psalms of the captivity and in the second 
part of Isaias—tutelary and saving. It is then placed on an 
equal footing with salvation, grace, goodness, and mercy. 
The prophet prays God to guide him, protect him, save him, 
and hear him with favour in his justice.? 


In thy justice thou wilt bring my soul out of trouble 
And in thy mercy thou wilt destroy my enemies.® 


This association of ideas is still more striking in the second 
part of Isaias: 


My justice is at hand, my salvation cometh; 

and my arms shall bring the people justice. 

Keep ye judgement and do justice; 

for my salvation is near to come and my justice to be revealed. 
It is I that speak justice 

and am a defender to save.‘ 


It is not difficult to explain this phenomenon. The second 
part of Isaias is a message of consolation. The prophet is 
commanded to cry aloud to Jerusalem: 


that her evil is come to an end, 

her iniquity is forgiven; 

she hath received of the hand of the Lord 
double (punishment) for all her sins. 


Thenceforth the justice of God will be exercised only in 
mercy for Israel and in vengeance against her enemies. We 
are thus prepared for the justice of the New Testament, 
which, far from excluding mercy, includes it as an essential 
element, and for that saving and redeeming justice which 
will manifest itself only in regard to Christian believers, 
when Jesus Christ, to whom they are united by faith, shall 
have made propitiation for their sins. But this particular 
aspect of it must not make us forget the others. 

The expression ‘‘ justice of God”’ is not very common in 
the New Testament, it appears once in St Matthew, once in 


* Is. lix, 17-18 ; xxviii, 17. 

* Ps. v, 8 ; xxx, I ; cxviii, 40 ; cxlii, 1, etc. 

lit fe hee ob he 

“ Is. li, 5 ; lvi, 1; lxiii, 1. This association of ideas is not wholly peculiar 
to the second part. Cf. Is. xxx, 18. 

* Is. xl. 2. This is the programme of the message of consolation. 


244 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


the Epistle of St James, and eight or nine times in St Paul. 
In the first two cases the meaning remains doubtful, although 
the justice of God seems to indicate something which is in 
man or which man can acquire; but it is the language of Paul 
which principally interests us. Here we find ourselves con- 
fronted by two very different accepted meanings. When it 
is said that ‘‘ our injustice commends (or makes prominent) 
the justice of God,’’? it clearly means an attribute of God— 
his fidelity or truth. On the other hand, in the text: ‘“‘ Him 
who knew no sin [God] hath made sin for us that we might 
be made the justice of God in him,’’? the justice of God 
cannot be a divine attribute: firstly, the contrast with sin is 
opposed to it; and secondly, it is impossible to conceive how 
we could be made a mode of divinity; it is, therefore, a 
justice that is in us, although derived from God. Similarly 
in this other text: ‘‘ For they, not knowing the justice of 
God and seeking to establish their own, have not submitted 
themselves to the justice of God,’’4 the antithesis exactly dis- 
tinguishes the meaning of the terms. Indeed, man’s own 
justice is elsewhere contrasted with the justice of God, where 
no misunderstanding is possible. ‘‘I desire,’’ the Apostle 
says to the Philippians, ‘‘ that I may be found in him, not 
having my justice, which is of the Law, but that which is of 
the faith of Christ Jesus, which is of God : justice [grounded] 
on faith.’’® Here ‘‘ the justice of God,’’ which replaces man’s 
own justice, being made the property of man, is therefore 
inherent in man. 

There remain two. passages about which the present con- 
troversy chiefly rages: ‘‘ For the justice of God is revealed 
therein [in the Gospel] from faith unto faith, as it is written : 
The just man shall live by faith.’’® At first glance the mean- 
ing of uncreated justice appears satisfactory ; for this saving 
justice is, in truth, revealed in the Gospel by the salvation of 
believers, just as the wrath of God is revealed outside of the 
Gospel by the destruction of the wicked; not to mention the 


OM. 1,17" Til, 5,20, 22,265, 265 x13 «Cory est Pini iii, 9 (rHv éx 
Ocod Sixaocdynv). Outside of St Paul, Matt. vi, 32 (fyretre Se Tpa@rov Thy 
Baotreiav Kat rHv dixatocdvny avrod); James i, 20 (dpy7) avdpds dixatoavvny 
@eod ovK épydlerat). See what is said in Vol. I, pp. 192-4. 

7 Rom. iti, 5. 252 Corty, 27. 

Fed ate iS ee *~ Phil ail, 6. 

* Rom. i, 17: Atxatoovvn yap Ocod ev abr@ dmoxadvnrera ex miorews els 
niorw, Kalas yéypanrat: 6 dé Sates €x miarews Cnoerar. Cf. Vol. I, pp. 192-4. 
The sequence of thought is as follows: ‘‘ The Gospel is an agent of salva- 
tion for every believer (16: d¥vapyis Bod e’s owrnpliav wavri T@ morevovrt) 
because (yap) the justice of God which is of faith is revealed in it, as zt ts 
written (xabws yéypanrat): “ The just man shall live by faith.’ The 
sense of the passage is, therefore, conditioned by the meaning of the scriptural 
quotation which serves as a proof or confirmation of the apostolic assertion. 
The fazth of Habacuc corresponds to the faith of the Apostle; Just (Sixatos) 
corresponds to justice (dtxatoovvn) ; and shall live ({jcerac) corresponds to 
salvation (owrnpia). 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 245 


fact that the revelation of God’s justice is an expression quite 
usual in the prophetic writings, where it undoubtedly denotes 
the manifestation of some divine activity. But on examining 
the text more closely, doubts arise. How can the intrinsic 
justice of God be ‘‘ from faith unto faith ’’ in any possible 
interpretation of the words? What has the quotation from 
Habacuc to do here, and what connection is there between 
the manifestation of eternal justice and that assertion of the 
prophet : ‘‘ The just man shall live by faith’’? On the con- 
trary, it is easy to see how the justice produced by God in 
man is ‘‘ from faith’’ (ék miorews), since faith is necessary 
condition for its development ; and how it progresses thence 
‘unto faith’’ (és rior), since faith remains its source, its 
measure, and its ideal; also how it is revealed in the Gospel 
which announces and realizes it; and, finally, how it exists 
and is revealed in conformity to ancient prophecies (xaOas 
yéypartat), for the prophet Habacuc certainly speaks of a 
justice inherent in man. 

The other text\Nis not more obscure: ‘‘ But now, without 
the Law, the justice of God is made manifest, being witnessed 
by the Law and the prophets, even the justice of God, by the 
faith of Jesus Christ, [a justice which is extended] unto all 
them that believe.’’? 

The justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ is a justice 
which dwells in man, and this St Paul affirms in the clearest 
manner, adding, moreover, that it is intended for all believers. 
And it is not difficult to see how this justice of God through 
faith is supported by the testimony of the Law and the 
prophets, for Abraham, according to Genesis, owed his 
justification to faith, and the just man, according to the 
prophet Habacuc, lives by faith. It is objected that, a little 
further on, God shows or demonstrates his justice—evidently 
his intrinsic justice—by proposing and exposing the crucified 
One as a means of propitiation, and it is urged that one and 
the same expression ought always to keep the same meaning 
in the same context. Much could be said in regard to this 
principle. As far as St Paul is concerned, it is certainly 
false; and if it were strictly applied, we should often end in 
an exegesis that is forced, childish, and absurd. Can we 
ignore the fact that the Apostle likes mentally to revolve 
about the various meanings of a word, frequently running 
through the whole gamut of definitions of a term, and that 
even here the notions of faith and law certainly change in 
the course of the phrase? Moreover, the divine attribute of 
justice and the justice which comes from God are two kindred 
concepts which are called by the same name and attract each 
other mutually, since God shows himself just, in justifying 
the sinner who is united to Jesus Christ. 


? Rom. iii, 21, 22. Commented on in Vol. I, pp. 204-6. 


246 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


On the whole: The “‘ justice of God”’ is presented by St 
Paul under two distinct but not incongruous aspects: the 
justice which is in God and the justice which comes from 
God. 

The intrinsic justice of God is not merely a vindictive or 
distributive justice, it is also—and sometimes chiefly—re- 
demptive justice; instead of excluding or ignoring goodness, 
grace, and mercy, it includes them. ; 

The justice inherent in man is not, therefore, unrelated to 
the intrinsic justice of God. God is just and manifests his 
justice by justifying man. Created justice is the effect and 
the reflection of uncreated justice. 


2. In looking through the-Epistles of St Paul before making 
any detailed analysis of them, one is struck by the fact that 
he constantly associates justice and man’s justification with 
the act of faith. Thus ‘‘ the justice of God [is] by the faith 
of Jesus Christ, justice [comes or results] from faith,? 
justice [rests] on faith,’’? in a word it is ‘‘ the justice of 
faith.”’* Similarly man ‘‘is justified by faith;’’> all, Jews 
and Gentiles, are ‘‘ justified by reason of faith ;’’® God “ justi- 
fies whosoever is of the faith of Abraham;’’’ finally, to every 
believer ‘‘ faith is imputed unto justice.’’®? If we examine 
tHese texts closely, we shall see that faith is not a simple, 
essential condition, the presence of which is required for 
some reason which we hardly understand, but that it exercises 
a real causality in the moral order. To speak accurately, it 
is not faith that justifies, it is God who justifies by faith, for 
faith is neither the principal efficient cause, nor the formal 
cause, but only the instrumental cause of our justification. 
God justifies by faith (aiore: or 50a ricrews) as a channel of 
grace; he justifies in view of faith or in regard to faith (ex 
miotews) as a beginning of man’s inward restoration; and he 
justifies on faith (él miores) as a foundation of salvation. 
The instrumentality of faith appears especially in the justifica- 
tion of the father of the faithful: ‘‘ Abraham believed God 
and it was imputed unto him for justice.’”’® St Paul does not 
say that justice was imputed to Abraham; he says—what is 
quite different—that faith was imputed to him for justice. 

? Rom. iii, 22: Stxatoovvn Beod 1a wicrews I. X. 

* Rom. ix, 30: dStxatoovvny tiv ex miotews. 

> Phil. iii, 9: rHv [Stxatootynry] 81a miarews Xprorod. 

* Rom. iv, 11,13: tijs Sixatoovvms tis wiaTEews .. . bd Sixatoovyns 
mlOTEews. 

* Rom. ili, 28 : AoyilopeBa Secxatotoba miarer avOpwrov. 

* Rom. ili, 30 (Stxardcer reptrounv €x miatews Kal dxpoBvoriav 8a THs 
miatews) ; Gal.-ii, 16 (a SixatwOape ex mlatrews Xpicrod); ili, 8 (€x 
miatews dixaot ra €Ovn); iii, 24 (Wa ex miatews Sixarwdpev ). 

7 Rom. ili, 26: dtxatotvra tov x migrews "Inood. 

* Rom. iv, 5: Aoyilerat 9 alors avrod els Sixatoodyny. 

° Gen. xv, 6; Rom. iv, 3, 22, 23 ; Gal. iii, 6; Jas. ii, 23; 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 247 


Nor does he say that faith is the equivalent of justice; for 
then this imputation would belong to man by right, whereas 
it is, according to Paul, an act of grace.* He says that faith 
was imputed for justice because faith is inferior to justice 
and justice is nevertheless conferred on account of faith. 
God does not recognize the equivalency of faith and justice, 
but he accepts it by grace; it is his mercy that makes up 
what is wanting. However, as his gifts are not illusory, 
justice, when credited to man’s account, becomes really the 
belonging and the property of man. % 

In the eyes of official Protestantism justifying faith has no 
moral value; it is a sort of passive instrument, a purely 
receptive power of justification, which exercises no causality 
and is only a condition sine qua non; it is only by an abuse 
of language that one can say that it justifies. The justifica- 
tion of the ungodly man takes place wholly in God; it 
changes nothing and effects nothing within man; it is a 
synthetic judgement, by virtue of which the wicked man, 
who remains wicked, is declared just. God, seeing his faith, 
but not on account of his faith, imputes to him the justice of 
Christ, without, however, giving it to him. Thus the un- 
godly man, though justified, is always in himself ungodly, 
but before God who has decreed to him the attribute of 
justice, he is just. 

This statement is hard to understand. How can the false 
be true, or how can God declare true what he knows to be 
false? Why is faith required, if it is inactive, and why has 
God any consideration for it, if it is valueless? By what 
right is it affirmed that the justice of Christ is imputed to 
us, when St Paul declares, on the contrary, that our faith is 
imputed to us for justice? Can we be surprised that many 
liberal Protestants reject this system as arbitrary, immoral, 
and incoherent? For them faith is not without value; it is a 
germ of virtue, an aspiration towards what is good, the 
starting-point of a new life. They tell us that on God’s part 
justification consists in being satisfied with this germ, in 
judging man by his ideal, in taking the tendency for the 
accomplished fact, in seeing in the humble acorn the noble 
oak which will evolve from it. God declares that the ungodly 
man is just because, by believing, he has already begun to 
be just, and because he will some day become wholly so. 

/’ We admit without hesitation that the justification of man 
suggests usually in the Old and even in the New Testament | 
the idea of a divine judgement, that it is possible to discover, 
it there without doing violence to the texts, and that in a 
small number of cases the justification is purely affirmative. 
It is so, for example, every time when it is a question of the 


2 Rom. iv, 16: 8:4 robro éx micrews Wa Kata xdpw. 


248 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


last judgement, which does not produce justice in man, but 
presupposes it: ‘‘ For not the hearers of the Law are just 
before God: but the doers of the Law shall be justified.’”’? 
Here the justification is only the verdict of the sovereign 
Judge; nevertheless, by virtue of the equation between 
‘* being justified’’ and ‘‘ being just before God,’’ the divine 
judgement is not arbitrary; it is founded on truth, not on a 
legal fiction. But that is not the ordinary sense; and what 
proves this is the impossibility of replacing, in most cases, 
the verb ‘‘to justify’’ by its so-called equivalents ‘‘ to 
declare just’ or ‘‘ to treat as just.’’ 
Even when the justification presents itself under the form - 
of a declaratory sentence, it supposes or produces justice. 
For how is it possible to conceive of a divine declaration not 
being true and a judgement of God being based upon error? 
When ‘‘ God justifies the ungodly,’’ say the leaders of 
Protestantism, the justification is not an analytical judge- 
ment, but a synthetic one, thew attribute of which is not 
included in the notion of the subject. An analytical judge- 
ment would be: ‘*‘ The ungodly man is not just.’’ But the 
judgement which God. pronounces, when he justifies us, is 
wholly different : it is ‘‘ The ungodly man is just.’? So that 
the wicked man, though justified, finds himself at the same 
time (in sensu composito) in possession of two contradictory 
qualities, one of which belongs to him as an ungodly man, 
while the other is attributed to him by a divine declaration. 
It would be like saying that a circle is round and square at 
the same time, if God pronounced it to be square: round 
essentially, but square by virtue of the synthetic judgement 
formulated by God. ‘‘ In justifying the sinner, God does not 
recognize in him any attribute (of justice) ; on the contrary, 
he gives him an attribute while he is still a sinner—namely, 
that of justice.’’? Is it surprising that such a doctrine has 
called forth protests from the day of its birth? Moreover, 
those who still defend it give up trying to understand it, and 
while claiming for it the authority of Paul, gladly take refuge 
in mystery. 
~ For a man to be just before God and for God to pronounce 
him just, one of two things is necessary : either that God has 
made him just previously, or that he makes him just by this 
pronouncement itself. In the latter hypothesis, the justifica- 
tion of the wicked would be declaratory in form but effective 
in reality. The divine sentence of justification would then 
produce its effect after the manner of sacramental formulas, 
like the words of consecration or like the words of Christ. 
when working miracles. In this way, there would be kept 
for the word ‘“‘ justification’’ that judicial meaning which 


1 Rom. ii, 13: factores legis justificabuntur. 
* Franks, Justification (Dict. of Christ and the Gospels, vol. i, p. 919). 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 249 


many modern exegetes regard as essential, while excluding 
that fictitious justification due to a divine judgement contrary 
to truth. — 

Most of the heterodox theologians of our day complain of 
finding a most singular duality in St Paul. They find that 
he has a juridical, objective, and imputed justification, and 
also a real, moral, subjective, and inherent one. In the first, 
the Holy Spirit intervenes only as a witness; in the second, 
he is an active agent, a pledge, and an instalment of the 
justification. In the one case faith is presented as a mystical 
bond that unites us with Christ; in the other, on the con- 
trary, faith is only a simple intellectual recognition of the 
scheme of salvation. The forensic justification is connected 
with the concept of redemption by ransom and penal substitu- 
tion, while the subjective justification has for its counterpart 
the deliverance from sin and the flesh. According to 
Pfleiderer, these two conceptions ‘‘ are like two rivers which 
flow in the same bed without mingling their waters.’’ Some 
declare them irreconcilable, or at least maintain that the re- 
conciliation was not effected in the mind of Paul; others 
endeavour to reconcile them, but are led astray by their 
prejudices and end in illogical solutions. 

They are persuaded that ‘‘it is impossible to harmonize 
the Apostle’s doctrine, save by regarding the justice of God 
as a quality in no way present in the believer, but surely 
promised him in the future.’’ This would be a kind of 
prophetic judgement by anticipation, which God will confirm 
and at the same time realize at the last day. Such is the 
famous forensic and eschatological justification meant to 
clear up all the mystery, but which, in reality, only 
accentuates the darkness. 


How much more simple, rational, and conformable to the 
letter and spirit of the Apostle is the Catholic solution, every 
detail of which can be justified by a word from St Paul: 

God takes the first steps; he alone is the author of the 
inward appeal as well as of the external call; it is the initia- 
tive of grace, and it is thus that faith is of God. 

Man then responds to the appeal, but not without divine 
help; he glorifies God by accepting his testimony, bending 
under his hand, and yielding himself entirely to him; this is 
a merit, certainly, but a merit the honour of which he cannot 
ascribe to himself. 

God intervenes again; he imputes faith for justice; he 
gives justice freely in return for faith, but not as the 
equivalent of or compensation for faith. Up to this time 
grace has always had the preponderating part. 

The justice granted to man binds him to do, and gives him 
the power to do good works. Man, equipped with habitual 


250 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


grace, can go from virtue to virtue; but the fruits which he 
obtains, although belonging to him, are not exclusively his, 
for he is working with the capital furnished by God, and with 
the advances from it which God allows him. 

Finally, God crowns his work; he justifies man for ever; 
this time by declaring him just, because, in fact, man is so. 
A wonderful combination, in which God is always active 
without either suppressing or fettering man’s activity, and in 
which man works out his own salvation without in any 
respect infringing on the sovereign domain of God. 


II1I—SAncTIFICATION 
1. The Idea of Sanctity. 2. Justice and Sanctity. 


1. The abyss which separates Christianity from classic 
paganism appears nowhere broader and deeper than in the 
concept of sanctity. The ancient religion of the Greeks and 
Romans did not even suspect such a thing as the sanctity of 
their gods; in any case, the epithet saintly was not applied 
to the gods of Olympus. Biblical phrases such as ‘‘ Be ye 
holy, because I am holy,’”’ or ‘‘ I who sanctify you am holy,”’ 
would have sounded strangely to pagan ears. 

However obscure may be the original and etymological 
meaning of the word holy in Hebrew, the phases of its 
philological evolution and the degrees of spiritualization 
through which it passed in the course of ages, as revelation 
progressed, it is certain that the biblical notion of sanctity 
is essentially religious and moral, pertaining to God par 
excellence and to finite beings by reason of their relation to 
God.! In the Old Testament the saint was a man who was 
united to God by a bond of consecration and special depend- 
ence; in the New Testament he is one who shares in the 
holiness of God itself. 


1 The Hebrew root U3) in all its present forms has no longer any save 
religious meanings and it is difficult to go back to its original physical signi- 
fication. It seems, however, that the primordial idea was that of separation. 
God was holy, first by reason of his majesty, transcendence and inaccessi- 
bility; then because of his aversion to everything impure, profane and 
morally evil. Holy persons and things were those which a special appoint- 
ment or consecration separated from common usage and reserved for the 
service of God. ; 

In order to translate the words derived from the root YP the Septuagint 
employed the adjective dy:os and its derivations dyidlew, dytaopds, dyiérns, 
aytwovvy. All these derivations were hardly ever used in profane literature; 
in passing to the New Testament, they kept their biblical signification, with 
a tendency to become always more spiritualized. The Greek word aytos 
had not much in common with the corresponding Hebrew word. It was not 
used in speaking of the gods and rarely in reference to men. Applied to 
things, it signified “ august, sacred,” if it were a question of an object conse- 
crated to the gods of heaven ; but if it referred to an object dedicated to the 
duties of the nether world, it meant “ cursed, execrable.”” Moreover, its 
use in any case was extremely rare. 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 251 


‘If, in order to distinguish them, justification and sanctifica- 

tion are compared, the latter appears like a positive perfec- 
tion, susceptible of indefinite progress, while the former 
presents itself under its negative aspect—the remission of 
sins—which does not seem to permit such progress at all. 
Sanctification includes indeed the notion of justification, but 
the contrary is not true; so that it is possible to conceive a 
providential order of things in which sinful man would be 
simply declared just, whereas it is impossible to imagine a 
saint whose sins should not have been forgiven. From this 
point of view, justification logically precedes sanctification, 
for which it serves as a foundation. 


2. Let us hasten to say that in the present order of things, 
with which alone we are interested, justification and sancti- 
fication are inseparable. We prove this by two series of 
texts. 

St Paul writes to the Corinthians : 


Know you not that the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of God ? 
Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the 
effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of 
God. And such some of you were. But you washed yourselves, but 
you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ and the Spirit of our God." 


The Apostle enumerates, apparently at random, half a 
score of the commonest vices among the pagans, especially 
at Corinth. He reminds his readers that a certain number 
of them—he does not generalize too much in order not to 
offend them—have formerly been guilty of those vices; but, 
no matter! baptism has washed all that away. Baptism 
effects at one single stroke the purification, sanctification, 
and justification of the sinner. It is in vain that excessively 
subtle exegetes labour to find a gradation in these three 
effects of the sacramental grace. It does not exist; but by 
placing sanctification between the other two fruits of baptism, 
St Paul shows that it is not posterior to them. To the 
Ephesians he addresses the same language; only here he 


1 y Cor. vi, 9-11; on the last verse, see Vol. I, p. 171. * AAG azedovoacbe, 
GAAG HytdoOnre, GAAG edixaiOnre. (a) The three verbs are aorists, not per- 
fects, because they do not express a final result which cannot be lost, but a 
grace accorded at a precise moment of time, at baptism.—(4) While the last 
two verbs are passive, the first is in the middle voice: a shade of thought 
worthy of note. It must not be rendered vous avez été lavés ou purifiés 
(Crampon, Lemonnyer, Second. etc.), but vous vous étes purifiés (thr lresset 
euch abwaschen, Weizsacker, Bachmann) ; because allusion is made to the 
co-operation of the catechumen, who has not been merely passive.—(c) The 
attempt of Estius to establish a certain gradation between purification, 
sanctification and justification is not successful., 


252 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


applies to the whole Church what is applied in the other 
passage to every Christian : 


Christ loved the Church and delivered himself for it, that he might 
sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life, that he 
might present it to himself, a glorious Church, not having spot, or 
wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish. 


Sanctity is not the privilege of a few chosen ones; it is 
the appanage of all Christians worthy of the name. When 
the Apostle writes to the saints of Rome, Corinth, Philippi, 
or any other city, he does not establish various categories of 
the faithful: he addresses them all indiscriminately.?_ Every 
Christian is for him a saint; and he gives to this word its 
full value. In a few rare texts he may indeed speak only 
of an external and legal sanctity, which does not rise above 
the level of the Old Testament; as when he says, for 
example, in regard to mixed marriages: ‘‘For the un- 
believing husband is sanctified by the believing wife; and 
the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing [husband] ; 
otherwise your children should be unclean; but now they 
are holy.’’? 

The conjugal union being so intimate that the two parties 
to it form only one flesh and one moral person, the sanctity 
of the one is imparted to the other; the unbelieving partner 
and his children are, as it were, immersed in an atmosphere 
of sanctity, which envelops and will finally penetrate them, 
as water, when mingled with wine, assumes the taste and 
the colour of the latter. But this way of speaking is excep- 
tional. The Christian, from the fact of his baptism, is 
sanctified by the Holy Spirit whose temple he is, * he becomes 
the friend of God® and he is called to sanctity;® and we 
know that for St Paul the call is always an efficacious call, 
that produces its effect. The sanctity of the Christian is, 


1 Eph. v, 25-27. See the explanation of this text later, p- 256. 

* Sacnts is put for Christians at least thirty times. 

* 1 Cor. vii, 14. Paul speaks of the case where one of the married pair 
has become a Christian after marriage ; for he forbids the marriage of a 
Christian with an unbeliever (vii, 32; 2 Cor. vi, 14). Another example of 
external and legal sanctity is mentioned in Rom. xi, 16: Quod st delthatio 
sancla est, et massa; et st radix sancta, et ramt. The root is the chosen 
people, which communicates a sort of external sanctity to the branches—that 
is to say, to the members of that people. In the same way a blessing, pro- 
nounced over food, sanctifies it, and causes it to be no more unclean and 
profane (1 Tim. iv, 5). 

* 1 Cor. iii, 16 ; 2 Cor. vi, 16. © Col. iii; 12.5 Romain 

° 1 Cor. i, 2: Hytacpevors ev X. °L., KAnrois dytows. Rom. i, 7: omntbus 
qut sunt Romae, dilectis Det, vocatis sanctis. Note here that Paul (a) addresses 
all the faithful; (4) he calls them all friends of God (dyamnrol @eos) ; 
(c) he supposes that all are called to sanctity (xAnrol dytor). Now KAnrol 
ad ytot must be understood’ as is xAntos amdéarodos (Rom. i, 1; 1 Cor. i, 1) 
“called to sanctity ” with an effective and efficacious call which puts them in 
possession of sanctity. 


FAITH, THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTIFICATION 253 


therefore, not merely a potential sanctity, but a sanctity 
which is at least initial, the germ of which needs only to 
fructify. 

Thus in the present order of things justification is not 
merely a remission of sins; it is a reconciliation with God,? 
who restores to us the divine friendship, and with it the 
privileges lost in Adam. Hence it is represented as a trans- 
formation of our entire being, a metamorphosis, which 
makes of every Christian ‘‘ a new creature.’’? 


1 Rom v, 10-11 ; 2 Cor. v, 18, 19. 
22 Cor. v, 17: €f tis ev Xptor@ Kaw «riots. Cf. Eph. ii, 10; Col. 
iil, 10. 


CHAPTER II 
THE SACRAMENTS 


HERE exists in the New Testament no general 

term designating the symbolic rites instituted 

by Jesus Christ to confer grace. As Pvorrip.ov, 

frequently translated by sacramentum in the 

Latin Bible, has sometimes the ineaning of 
symbol or sacred sign, it seemed the most fitting word to 
express the visible vehicles of grace, when a single appella- 
tion was desired to include them.! At an early date, baptism, 
with the laying on of hands which seals it and the Holy 
Communion which accompanies it, were thus named; but the 
special nature of these three rites which make the neophyte 
a member of the Christian fold and remind us of the religious 
initiations of paganism, made the extension of the name 
mysteries to the other sacraments difficult. The correspond- 
ing Latin word sacramentum was, from its very vagueness, 
better adapted to denote the different Christian institutions, 
the common feature of which was indeed their sacred 
character, but whose analogies were, at first sight, less 
striking than their specific differences: hence this word was 
applied to all, or nearly all, the sacraments by St Augustine, 
who, in doing so, only made general the usage of Tertullian 
and St Cyprian. 

Of the seven sacraments of the Church St Paul does not 
mention extreme unction nor, probably, penance.? But, on 
the other hand, his allusions to baptism are quite frequent; 
his teaching regarding the Eucharist is more complete than 
that of the evangelists; and his statements about Holy 
Order and Matrimony allow us to conclude that he regards 
them as sacred signs conferring grace, although we cannot 
infer directly from them that he believes them to have been 
instituted by Jesus Christ. 


I—-Baptism 


1. Manifold Symbolism of Baptism. 2. Mystical Death and Resurrection. 
3. Faith and Baptism. 


1. The rite of baptism by immersion, which was the usual 
practice of the primitive Church, can be considered under at 


1 See later, Note L. 

* We speak of penance as a sacrament. The “ ministry of reconciliation ”’ 
(2 Cor. v, 18) which was confided to the Apostles is not the power of the keys. 
The Epistles mention indeed a sort of public penance consisting of putting 


254 


THE SACRAMENTS 255 


least four symbolical aspects: as a sacred bath, symbol of 
internal purification; as a return to the light, symbol of 
spiritual illumination; as a mystical burial, symbol of death 
to the old man and of union with the death of Christ; and 
as a mystical resurrection, symbol of regeneration and of a 
new life. 

Later, this symbolism was enriched by two new elements : 
anointing, emblem of the grafting of the neophyte into the 
true olive-tree, and the change of dress, emblem of mforal 
transformation; but this twofold symbolism, whether sug- 
gested or not by St Paul’s language, must not occupy 
our attention here, for nothing proves that it goes back to 
the apostolic age.! Of the four aspects pointed out above, 
the first—the one which the etymology of the word first 
evokes, and which most naturally suggests itself to the 
mind—was also the most common at the beginning. The 
second was specially honoured from the second century on- 
wards; after the time of St Justin, to illumine and illumina- 
tion became synonymous with ‘‘to baptize’’ and with 
‘‘baptism.’’? These forms of speech and of thought are 
common to St Paul. Christians have ‘‘ the eyes of their 
heart enlightened ’’;? they are ‘‘ children of the light and 
children of the day ’’ ;* much more, the light which penetrates 
them at baptism changes them into luminous centres, which 
reflect it and disperse it, as a crystal, illumined by the sun’s 
rays, becomes glittering and radiant ; they shine like “‘ lights in 
the world,’’> and are themselves ‘‘ light in the Lord.’’® Nor 
is Paul unaware of the fact that baptism is a ‘‘ bath of re- 
generation and renovation ’’ ;? that all the faithful are ‘‘ puri- 


the offender in quarantine and excluding him irom the Christian community 
until he amended his conduct (2 Thess. iii, 6, 14, 15 ; 1 Cor. v, 3-5; 2 Cor. 
li, 6-10) ; but this is still not sacramental penance. 

't This manifold symbolism is well presented by S¢ Cyril of Jerusalem 
(Catech. Mystag., ii.) : (2) Divestment, or rejection of the old man (ii, 2; 
XXXIV, 1077).—(6). Anointing with consecrated oil (eAatw €mopxioT®@) or 
grafting into the true olive tree (1080). This unction differs from the unction 
of the chrism (pdpov ypiopa) which forms part of the sacrament of confirma- 
tion, and of which more is said later (Catech. Mystag., iii).—(c) Triple im- 
mersion, or death and burial (1080-81).—(d@) Triple emersion, or spiritual 
resurrection and illumination (zb¢d.).—(e) White garments, or sanctifying 
grace (Catech. Mystag., iv, 8; XXXIV, 1104).—The same symbolism, but 
less methodical, in the De Mysteritis and the De Sacramentts, attributed to 
St Ambrose.—The De Baptismo of Tertullian, which is polemical rather 
than dogmatic, scarcely stops at symbolism. C/,. De corona, 3. 

* St Justin is the first to use the word dwrtopes in the sense of baptism 
(Apol., i, 61; Kadetrar S€ robro 7d Aovrpov dwricpyds); but his manner of 
speaking seems to show clearly that this term was in general use in his time. 

SSUph ir 15: mEpwTLapEevovs Tous opBaApovs Tis Kapdias & bpav. 

“ 1 Thess. v, 5 : mavres yap vpets | viot dutds €ore xal viol Huépas. 

Ser hiiit, £5 = gaivedde ai ws pworhpes ev Koop. 

©" Eph. v, 8: viv dé pas € ev ad ws Téxva dwTos mepirrareire. 

7 Titus iii, 5: €owoev tuds 81a Aovrpot madyyeveoias. See below, p. 259. 


256 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


fied, sanctified, justified’’;t and that Jesus Christ, wishing 
to prepare for himself a spouse perfect and worthy of him, 
sanctifies it (the Church), ‘‘ cleansing it by the laver of water 
in the word.’’? Certainly it is not a question here of a 
material purification: the baptismal application owes its 
efficacy to the all-powerful word which elevates it to the 
dignity of a sacramental rite. It is not, however, the puri- 
fication of the soul through the remission of sins, or the 
illumination of the intellect by faith, that St Paul wishes to 
make prominent when he speaks of baptism; it is the 
mystical death and resurrection, represented and produced 
by the sacrament. 


2. The rebirth of man has a previous death as its essential 
condition. Jesus Christ is a Saviour only by the cross, and 
he saves us only by associating us with his death. But to 
become capable of saving us, this ideal death must be 
realized in each one of us, and this is what takes place at 
baptism : 

Know you not that all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus are baptised 
in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into 


death ; that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted 





1 1 Cor. vi, 11: dmeAodoacbe . . . HytdoOnre . . . edixarwOnre. 

* Eph.v, 26: iva adriy dyidog Kabapioas TH AoutpS Tod datos év pyyarte. 
The sequence of thought is this : Jesus Christ delivered himself up to death 
for his Church, tz order to sanctify it by purifying each one of its members 
in baptism (iva denotes immediate purpose, because baptism has efficacy 
only by virtue of the redemptive death), im order ¢o prepare for himself a 
spouse wholly pure and wholly beautiful (iva wapaorjon, remote purpose, 
because it is obtained only by means of baptism, application of the redemptive 
death to individuals).—It is quite probable that the Apostle here alludes to 
the dath which was for a bride the prelude to the nuptial toilette, but it is 
beyond doubt that rd Aourpdv rod bdaros denotes baptism. The Saviour 
wishes to sanctify his Church in order that it may be worthy of him, and he 
sanctifies it dy purifying it “‘ by the bath of water ” (xa@apicas, in relation 
to the aorist dyido7, marks not priority but simultaneousness).—What does 
the expression év pjart refer to and what does it mean? It cannot be 
made to refer to dytaoy, which is much too remote, nor to T@ Aourp@ rob 
SSaros, because it cannot form one expression either with Aourpdy or with 
SSwp, and because the repetition of the article (r@ ev pyyart or Tov ev pyyatt) 
would consequently be indispensable; it refers, therefore, to xafapicas. 
Some Protestant writers think that év pyyare signifies ‘“‘ by the word of the 
Gospel ’’ ; but pfjua, especially without an article, never signifies and never 
can signify the Gospel; it would require a determining complement, such as 
pia THs miorews (Rom. x, 8), Xptorod (Rom. x, 17), Geod (Eph. vi, 17; 
Heb. vi, 5). Others (St Chrysostom, etc.) think that it refers to the formula 
of baptism; but, if this formula were directly and distinctly indicated, the 
article (€v r@ pratt) would be necessary. The only admissible meaning, 
therefore, is : ‘‘ by purifying it by the baptism of water (instrumental dative) 
by means of a word” (év instrumental).—The baptismal water a/ome has not 
the power to purify the soul ; there must be added to it ‘‘ a word,”’ which is 
indeed the formula of baptism, although it is designated here only generically : 
Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum (Augustine). 


THE SACRAMENTS Ae 


together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of 
his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, 
that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve 
sin no longer ; for he that is dead is freed from sin.! 


This text condenses into a few words of admirable fulness 
of meaning the direct effects of baptism, the benefits which 
it assures us in the future and the duties which it imposes 
on us now. Through failing to distinguish these different 
points of view, exegetes and theologians amalgamate incon- 
gruous ideas and thus make of one of the most beautiful 
pages of St Paul a piece of insipid nonsense. We have to 
consider here only the immediate fruits of baptism. To be 
baptized into the death of Christ is to be baptized into the 
dying Christ—that is, to be incorporated with Christ in the 
very act by which he saves us, to die mystically with him 
who suffered death in the name and for the benefit of all. 
This mystical death is a reality, for the effects of it are very 
real: death to sin, death to the old man, death to the Law. 

If we are to believe certain Protestant commentators, death 
to sin is only the result of a legal fiction: God, they say, 
regards us as dead, in the same way as he treats us as just, 
although no change has taken place in us. At most, they 
make the change consist in a decisive breaking-off from sin 
on the part of the will, with its instincts and desires, and this 
under the continually renewed power of faith in the death of 
Christ for sin. This explanation explains nothing. That the 
Christian from the very fact of his baptism is in duty bound 
to persevere in a state of death in relation to sin, no one 
disputes; but this duty, if it is analysed, implies an internal 
change of the moral order. St Paul is not satisfied with 
saying : ‘‘ Die to sin,’’ but he says: ‘‘ You are dead to sin.”’ 
To die to sin, therefore, is to lay aside the taint of sin; but 
it is at the same time to be delivered from its tyranny and 
to be enabled to resist its further attacks. There is no 
restriction, no exception; original sin, present sins, all that 
is called sin in the true sense of the word, has disappeared 
at baptism; for ‘‘ there is now no more condemnation for 
them that are in Christ Jesus.’’? Yesterday they may have 
been idolaters, fornicators, thieves, calumniators, and 
blasphemers ; now they have been “‘ purified, sanctified, and 
justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christx*? 

Death to the old man is a consequence of death to sin. 
When we were baptized into the death of Christ, ‘* our old 
man was crucified with him.’’* The old man denotes all that 
we have in common with the first Adam, and all that we 
inherit directly or indirectly from him, as the religious Head 


1 Rom..vi, 3-7. Cf. Vol.I, p.-222. * Rom. viii, I. 
*s5 Corayi,tt. « Rom. vi, 6. 


Il. LZ 


b 


258 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of humanity. All this perishes through the fact of our union 
with the second Adam. It is very evident that death to the 
old man is progressive, for the inclination to evil persists 
even in regenerate man; but the old man has received a 
mortal blow; with the antidote of grace, concupiscence, 
called here ‘‘ the body of sin,’’ is rendered inert and harmless. 

It seems clear also that Christian baptism is a death to the 
Mosaic Law: ‘‘ For I, through the Law, am dead to the Law, 
that I may live to God; with Christ I am nailed to the cross. 
And I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.—My brethren, 
you also are become dead to the Law by the body of 
Christ. . . . Now we are loosed from the Law of death, 
wherein we were detained.’’! In this latter passage the 
allusion to baptism appears evident: it is, in fact, baptism 
which puts an end to all our servitudes : ‘‘ He who is dead is 
freed from sin ’’ and from all its consequences. It is probable 
that as much must be said also of the preceding text; for at 
what moment has the Apostle been crucified with Jesus 
Christ, if not in the baptismal rite, which united him to the 
dying Christ? 

It is not without a reason that the Apostle always estab- 
lishes a connection between the spiritual death and the 
spiritual resurrection. Indeed, it is impossible to die to sin 


without beginning to live to grace: ‘‘If we be dead with 
Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with 
Christ. . . . If we have been planted together in the like- 


ness of his death we shall also be in the likeness of his 
resurrection.’’* Our new life may not be apparent, but it 
exists of necessity, because it is a corollary of our death: 
‘“ You are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.’’? 
How could it be otherwise, since baptism, which is the grave 
of the old man, is also the cradle of the new?4 

In order to appreciate this language, it is necessary to 
compare the following expressions: ‘‘to be baptized into 
(eis) Christ’’ and ‘‘ to put on Christ.”"5> We cannot agree 
with those who claim that the etymological meaning of ‘ to 
baptize ’’ and the figurative meaning of ‘‘ to put on’’ have 
wholly disappeared from these modes of speech. To be 
baptized into Christ is to be plunged into the mystical Christ, 
as into the natural element of our new life; it is, therefore, 
substantially the same thing as to be baptized into the body 
of Christ—that is to say, incorporated into his mystical 
body. Similarly, to put on Christ, is to be enveloped with 
that divine atmosphere, made a living member of Christ and 


? Gal. ii, 19; Rom. vii, 6. 

ReRomyviye (chazebimnn ie lle vias: 

*. Coline; 

* Col. ii, 12: consepulti et tn baptismo, tn quo et TESUITE RESTS. 
§ For the phrase “ to be baptised into Christ,’’ see Note X. 


THE SACRAMENTS 259 


subjected to that supernatural force, known as the soul of 
the Church, which is nothing else than the Holy Spirit. The 
Apostle likes to speak of putting on Christ, or the Lord 
Jesus Christ, of putting on the new man, of putting on im- 
mortality, weapons of light, the armour of God, the helmet 
of salvation, the breastplate of faith and of charity ; in all 
these instances the figurative meaning is clear. We put on 
Christ not so much as a mantle that covers our poverty, as a 
vital form which makes us participate in his life. 

Almost all the fruits of baptism considered as the begin- 
ning of a new life are admirably grouped together in the 
following texts: ‘‘He (God) saved us by the laver of re- 
generation and renovation of the Holy Ghost, whom he hath 
poured forth upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our 
Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we may be heirs, 
in hope, of life everlasting.’’! According to this, passing 
over the collateral points, baptism is a bath of regeneration 
and renovation: a bath which purifies the soul of all its past 
stains ; of regeneration, because it is a second birth by water 
and by the Holy Ghost, which renders us children of God, 
as the first birth rendered us slaves of sin; of renovation, 
because under the influence of the creative Spirit, the 
neophyte puts off the old man, puts on the new, is trans- 
formed in his entire being, and becomes a new creature.— 
Baptism is, moreover, the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into 
our hearts by the Father, with the mediation of the Son.— 
Finally, baptism renders us heirs of eternal life by conferring 
upon us the adoption of sons: true heirs, although the effec- 


Titus ili, 5-7: €owoev yds 1a Aovtpod maXyyevecias Kai dvaxawdcews 
IIvedpatos ayiou, od eféxeev eg’ yas mrovaiws Sia Inood rod owripos hav, va 
SixatwOevres TH exelvou xadpiTt KAnpovdpor yernOdpev Kar’ eAmida Cwijs 
atwviov. (a) The subject of the phrase is certainly God, who has just been 
named (rod owrjpos juadv Oecod) and to whom mercy rightly belongs 
(kara TO avtod €deos).—(b) The genitive dvaxawdcews might strictly 
depend on dd, which would give us ¢wo instruments of salvation : baptism 
and renovation ; but it is much more natural to make it depend (as the Vulgate 
does) on Aovrpod. Baptism is then described as a regeneration and a 
renovation.—(c) The laver (Aovrpdv) is certainly baptism. The figurative 
meaning purification, imagined by some exegetes to account for the absence 
of the article before Aourpor, is to-day universally rejected—(d) This laver 
is a bath of regeneration, because it produces regeneration, as almost all 
exegetes, even heterodox ones, concede (see B. Weiss, Meyer’s Kommentar’, 
1902, p. 369). The word madtyyeveoia is not explained by Matt. xix, 28 
(the only other example in the N.T.), where it signifies the renovation of the 
world after the parousza. It is necessary rather to compare John iii, 3 (mst 
quits renatus fuerit denuo) ; iil, 4-7.—(e) Renovation (avaxaivwots) is another 
aspect of regeneration. Regeneration expresses the fact of a second birth 
(waAvv) because the first birth makes us heirs of sin (John iii, 7 : Se? buds yev- 
vnOivat dvwiev, whether dvwHev signifies again, as Nicodemus understands 
it, or from on high, the necessity of a second birth is not thus less) ; renova- 
tion expresses the gua/ity of this second birth, presented everywhere as a 
creation, as the production of a mew being, as a metamorphosts (2 Cor. v, 17; 
Gal. vi, 15 ; Rom. xii, 2 ; 2 Cor. iii, 18 ; Eph. ii, 15 ; iv, 24 ; Col. iii, 10, etc.) 


260 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


tive enjoyment of our patrimony is deferred, and although 
by this title we are only heirs in hope (xkAnpovopoe kar’ eArida), 
prospective heirs; but we know also that, so far as God is 
concerned, our hope is certain of fulfilment. 


3. All the effects which we have just assigned to baptism— 
justice, life, salvation, adoption of sons, and the possession 
of the Holy Spirit—are attributed by St Paul also to faith. 
Whence comes this close union, this mutual interpenetra- 
tion of faith and baptism? In the first place, there is 
synchronism. Almost all those to whom Paul addressed his 
Epistles had received baptism at the same time as the gift of 
faith : both these recollections were blended in their memory. 
The instruction of the catechumens was then concise: the 
Saviour had said, as he ascended to heaven: ‘‘ Whoever 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved,’’ as if the two 
actions were simultaneous. In fact, the three thousand men 
converted by Peter, at the first Pentecost, were baptized that 
same day ;! the eunuch of Queen Candace descended from his 
chariot to receive baptism at the hand of the deacon Philip 
who had just instructed him ;? St Paul’s gaoler was baptized 
with all his family the very night on which he had embraced 
the faith ;? the twelve disciples at Ephesus, who had as yet 
received only the baptism of John, ‘‘ believed on Jesus and 
were baptized.’’* A similar formula epitomizes the labours 
of the Apostle at Corinth.° There was no interval between 
faith and baptism. 

To this first external bond—the resultant of the simultane- 
ousness of the two acts and the identity of the two memories 
—is added another, still more intimate and pertaining to the 
nature of things. For St Paul concrete, normal faith, the 
faith that justifies, is not a simple assent of the intellect to a 
speculative truth ; it is the consent of the reason, the will, and 
the whole man to the Gospel—that is to say, to the plan of 
salvation of which God is the author and Jesus Christ the 
proclaimer. This initial faith, with which Paul especially 
concerns himself, for it was for him, as well as for his first 
readers, the decisive point of his life and the critical moment 
of his destiny, necessarily includes therefore, together with 
the offering of himself to God, the implicit desire for baptism. 
Not only is the baptism of an adult inconceivable without 
faith, since it is inconceivable without repentance (perdvoia) 
and conversion to God—but sincere and justifying faith is 
also inconceivable without a desire for baptism. Hence our 
spiritual regeneration is attributed sometimes to faith, some- 
times to baptism, because the act and the rite are mutually 
dependent on each other and exercise a common causality. 


AVA CtSiiihcArs 2 Acts vili, 38. 8 Acts xvi, 33. 
* Acts xix, 5. 5 Acts xviil. 


THE SACRAMENTS 261 


The case of a catechumen overtaken by death before receiving 
the sacrament is not chimerical; but it is accidental and 
exceptional, and a theory does not take into consideration 
exceptions and accidents: ‘‘ You are all the children of God 
by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been 
baptized in Christ have put on Christ.’?! Thus the adoption 
of sons is attributed at the same time to faith and to baptism. 
You are no longer, says the Apostle, little children (vjmvou, 
maides), as the Jews had previously been, still in tutelage 
and under a pedagogue; you are children of God (viot cov) 
who have reached a mature age, are emancipated from the 
Law, and in full possession of your patrimony and all your 
rights; and you are all this by the living faith which unites 
you to Christ Jesus and makes you participate in his preroga- 
tives. How should you not be children of God? ‘Baptized in 
Christ, you have put on Christ, you have the form of Christ, 
and consequently also the adoption of sons inherent in that 
form. It is indeed union with Christ which makes us children 
of God, and this union is effected by faith and by baptism; 
but neither can the effective union of baptism be produced 
without the effective union of faith, nor the effective union 
of faith be produced without some intrinsic relation with the 
effective union of baptism; it is because the effective union 
of faith tends essentially to the effective union of baptism 
that it becomes itself effective; and the two conceptions, far 
from being opposed, are reunited. 


II1—CoONFIRMATION 


The bestowal of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of 
hands, being so closely united with baptism, the two acts 
seemed to be only integral parts of one and the same 
rite. No doubt St Paul’s question to the disciples of 


1 Gal. ili, 26, 27: I]dvres yap viot Oeob eore Sia THs micrews ev XprorH 
*Inood. door yap eis Xptorov €BamticOnve Xpiorov evedvcacbe.—(a) The 
first yap gives the reason of the preceding affirmation (At ubi venit fides, jam 
non sumus sub paedagogo). ‘The reason is that we are now children of God 
(viot @eod) who have come to maturity, and that we are no longer, as formerly, 
before the coming of Christ, vyztoe (iv, 13) or watdes (the idea contained in 
madaywyos), young chtldren—(b) The emphasis is on the word zavves, 
placed prominently at the beginning of the phrase and still more accentuated 
by oaot of the following phrase. The Apostle was obliged to prove only 
that the Jews are no more under the Law (zon sumus sub paedagogo), but he 
proves more ; he proves that no Christian can be under the Law, for all are 
children of God, all are baptised in Christ.—{c) The words ev Xptorg "Inood 
might depend on ziovts, for in biblical Greek we sometimes find morevew év 
and also wiorts ev (Eph. i, 15; Col. i, 4), which allows the suppression 
of the definite article before ev X.’IJ. We should therefore be children of 
God by fatth tn Christ Jesus. Nevertheless it is better to make év. Xptord 
*Inood, as well as 8a wiorews, refer to viot @eob e€ore (You are children of 
God by faith in Christ Jesus, or, You are children of God in Christ Jesus by 
faith). 


262 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Ephesus, who he thought had been baptized with Christian 
baptism, shows plainly that these acts were not only distinct, 
but separable ;} and indeed, the Samaritans, baptized by the 
deacon Philip, received the Holy Spirit only later, on the 
arrival of the apostles ;2 nevertheless, as there was no other 
reason for separating confirmation from baptism than the 
absence of a legitimate minister, they were usually conferred 
together and formed two connected articles of the elementary 
Christian instruction. 

St Paul, supposing that Christians had received the Holy 
Ghost at baptism, does not mention the laying on of hands 
except in connection with the sacrament of Holy Order. 
Many theologians think they see an allusion to confirmation 
in the following passage: ‘‘ He that confirmeth us with you 
in Christ and that hath anointed us is God, who also hath 
sealed us and given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.aas 

The argument founded on this text is very uncertain. It 
can hardly be supported by the verbs to fortify or confirm 
(BeBarov, qui confirmat), to seal (cppayirdpevos, qui signavit), 
to anoint (xpicas, qui unxit); for these terms were applied 
to confirmation only at a later date, and they have God for 
their subject, not the sacred minister. Moreover, it is not a 
question here of all the faithful, but of Paul and his com- 
panions, especially Sylvanus and Timothy ; and it is not clear 
how these last could attribute to a gift, which was common 
not only to them, but to all Christians, the courage necessary 
to the apostles for the worthy exercise of their ministry. 
The unction from which this divine strength is derived is 
their vocation to the apostolate itself; and the seal which 
marks them with its imprint is seen in the operations of the 
Holy Spirit, by which their mission is authorized. 

There is, however, a clear allusion to confirmation in a text 
in which the majority of theologians do not perceive it: 
‘‘For as the body is one and hath many members, and all 
the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are 
one body, so also is Christ; for in one Spirit were we all 
baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether 


1 Acts xix, 2. * Acts viii, 17, 18. 

8 2 Cor. i, 21,22: 'O 8€ BeBadv Huds atv dptv Kal xpicas juds Beds, o 
xal ofpaytodpevos Huds Kal Sods rév dppaBdva rob Ivevparos ev tais Kapodlats 
ipuav.—The word feBatodv has in itself nothing relating toa sacramental 
rite (cf. Rom. xv, 8; 1 Cor. i, 6,8; Col. ii, 7). The strength which God 
confers on the Apostles has for its effect to increase their adhesion, or 
perhaps their devotion and their fidelity to Christ (ets Xpworov), and conse- 
quently aids them better to fulfil their ministry.—The verb ypiew denotes 
everywhere else the anointing of the Messiah (Luke iv, 18, quotation from 
Is. lxi, 1; Heb. i, 9, alluding to Ps. xliv, 8; Acts iv, 27 and x, 38, alluding 
probably to one of these two texts). Here it is the anointing preparatory 
to the apostolic mission: Spzrttus Domini unxtt me, evangelizare paupert- 
bus misit me.—As for ogpayilew, it does not necessarily denote the seal 
imprinted by the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of confirmation. 


THE SACRAMENTS 263 


bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to 
drink.’’* Four reasons make us think that this infusion of 
the Spirit denotes the sacrament of confirmation: the aorist 
(erotic Onpev) indicates neither a permanent state nor an 
action often repeated, but a transitory rite analogous and 
parallel to that of baptism.—Further, we cannot think of 
baptism itself, which has just been mentioned, nor of drink- 
ing the Eucharist, which cannot be recognized under this 
figure.—Paul’s words describe the formation of the mystical 
body: by baptism the neophyte is grafted on to Christ, 
immersed in Christ, incorporated into Christ ; then intervenes 
the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church, in order to infuse a 
new life into it; the gift of the Holy Spirit completes the 
incorporation of baptism.—In the Old Testament as well as 
in the New, the mission of the Spirit of God is usually 
presented under the symbol of an outpouring, a rain, or an 
exhalation,? and can there be a more appropriate figure 
than this by which to designate the sacred rite which renews 
and perpetuates in the bosom of the Church the miracle of 
Pentecost ? 


IJI—Tue Eucuarist 
1. Paul’s Formulas. 2. Allusions to Sacrifice. 


1. If baptism gives birth to the mystical body, the 
Eucharist feeds it and makes it grow. St Paul presents the 
type of the two sacraments together. The Hebrews, he 
says, ‘‘ were baptized in Moses, in the cloud and in the sea; 
and did all eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the 
same spiritual drink.’’* The manna and the water from the 


* 1 Cor. xii, 13: Kat yap év évi TIveduare qpeis mavres eis & odpa 
éBarricOnuey . . . Kal wavres & II]veiua eéroriacOnpev. The received 
Greek text has eis & mveiya (tn unum Spirttum), a reading which the 
present Vulgate favours (¢2 uno Sptritu). But the critics who possess most 
authority prefer the reading adopted by us, which is that of the principal 
Greek manuscripts, of a great number of the Fathers (Athanasius, Chrysostom, 
Ambrose, Augustine,etc.), of the Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Gothic, 
Italic, and even of the original Vulgate, to judge from the most ancient 
codices, such as Amtatinus (Omnes unum Spirttum potati sumus).—It could 
be more forcibly translated : “‘ We were drenched with the same Spirit,”’ or 
‘We drank, we inhaled the same Spirit.” 

Reise Silt, KXX11, 15> XV, 3) ele dlo eo puezech. xlvil, Ic zacnexi, 105 
xiv, 8 ; Joel ii, 28, etc.—John vii, 39, 40; Acts ii, 17, 18, 33; Titus iii, 6, etc. 

* 1 Cor. x, 1-2. The Israelites received a figurative baptism and partici- 
pated in a figurative Eucharist (mvevparixov Boda, mvevpatixov mépua). 
St Paul employs the general terms for food and drink, the better to indicate 
their relation to the Eucharistic elements. This food and this drink were 
spiritual, because they had a typical or sptrttual meaning (x, 6: Tatra 
S€ tU0t judy eyevnPnoav. Compare, for this interpretation of the word 
“ spiritual,’’ Apoc. x1, 8). They were also spzrttua/ in another way, because 
they were not purely material, but miraculous, and because they came from 
the sprrttual Rock (x,4: mveuparexov €Emtov mopa> Emwov yap €K 
mveupatixas mérpas. Note the ydp, which gives the reason for the 
epithet mvevyarixdy, and compare for this meaning 1 Pet. ii, 5). 


264 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


rock are called spiritual, both because they were the result 
of a miracle and because they prefigured the two elements of 
the Eucharist, the food and drink of the man regenerated 
by baptism. 

It is to a fortuitous combination of circumstances that we 
owe the teaching of Paul concerning the Eucharist. He had 
delivered it orally to the Corinthians, as to all his other 
catechumens, and would not have repeated it in writing but 
for the doubts of the new Christians in regard to meats 
offered to idols, and but for their irreverent conduct during 
the celebration of the agape. Wecan readily believe that his 
oral teaching was more developed, but it could hardly have 
been more precise. The Apostle first indicates to us the 
source of his information, Jesus Christ himself: “‘I have 
received from the Lord that which I delivered unto you.’’? 
In describing the institution of the Eucharist, he lays stress 
upon the circumstances of time—‘‘ the same night in which 
he was betrayed to his enemies,’’ ‘‘ after he had supped,”’ 
‘‘at the end of the [farewell] meal’’—in order to fix the 
scene more perfectly in the minds of the neophytes, or rather 
in order to put it in direct connection with the death of the 
Lord Jesus. 

The formula of the consecration of the bread could not be 
more clear. It would be not only obscure, but unintelligible 
and contradictory if the Saviour had said: ‘‘ This bread is 
my body ’’; for it is absolutely impossible that a thing should 
be and not be at the same time, and the difficulty would not 
be removed by including the body of Christ in ordinary 
bread, for it would still be untrue that the real bread is the 
real body of Christ. But Jesus speaks unequivocally : “* This 
is my body, which [is] for you.’’? The subject of the phrase 
is the demonstrative pronoun ‘‘ this’’—that is to say, what 
you see before you, that which I indicate to you by a gesture, 
that which is designated still neither as ordinary bread nor 
as the body of Christ, but the meaning of which will be 


PTAC OL X12, 


2 1 Cor..xi, 24: Luke xxii,19; Mark xxiv, 22: Matt. xxvi, 26: 
Tobro pod €or TooTS €or Tobré €or Toord éoTw 
76 Opa TO oGpd pov TO O@pa pov. TO O@pUG pov. 
TO UTEp DuoV. TO UmEp Dudv 
ddd pevov. 


The essential part of the formula is identical in the four texts. For the text 
of St Luke, from a critical point of view, cf. W. B. Frankland, The Early 
Eucharist (A.D. 30-180), London, 1902, pp. 115-119 (according to him the 
long account is indeed by St Luke, but does not belong to the first edition of 
the Gospel).—For the addition of xAwpevov in the passage of St Paul, an 
addition attested by numerous witnesses, but with many different readings 
(Opunrépevor, frangitur, frangetur, tradttur, tradetur, datur), see Scrivener - 
Miller, /ntroduction*, 1894, vol. ii, pp. 381-382. The various readings are a 
strong argument against the authenticity of xAdpevov. If it is retained, it 
will be necessary to understand it of the euchartstic body, comparing 1 Cor. 
Dae he 


THE SACRAMENTS 265 


determined at the end of the proposition, when something 
shall have been affirmed concerning it. The substantive 
verb, which serves as a copula, expresses as always the 
identity pure and simple between subject and predicate. It 
is a consolation to see to-day the Protestant and rationalistic 
exegetes agreeing with the Catholics to recognize such an 
elementary truth and to reject the biassed exegesis which 
translated ‘‘to be’”’ by ‘‘to signify,’’ contrary both to 
biblical and profane usage. Should the ambiguity be in the 
predicate? Ought the word ‘‘ body ’’ to be taken figuratively 
as a symbol of the body? The hypothesis is already un- 
acceptable for the reason that it distorts without reason the 
natural meaning of the terms, but still more is its absurdity 
perceived, on substituting for the word ‘‘ body ”’ its pre- 
tended equivalent: ‘‘ This is the symbol of my body, which 
symbol is for you. Whoever shall eat the bread and drink 
the chalice unworthily is guilty of the symbol of the body 
and of the symbol of the blood of the Lord.’’ As to the 
identification of the eucharistic body with the Church, it is 
best to say nothing about it. Certain systems need no 
refutation, and they are pointed out only to show to what 
desperate solutions the abandonment of the only natural and 
legitimate meaning drives us.} 

Taken by itself, independently of the allusions and circum- 
stances which determine it, the other formula of consecra- 
tion: ‘‘ This chalice is the new covenant in my blood,’’? 


? Axel Andersen (Das Abendmahl tn den swet ersten Jahrhunderten nach 
Christus, Giessen, 1904) advances the theory (p. 4) that the dody of Christ, here 
as elsewhere, signifies the Church, and (p. 6) that the death of Christ not being, 
in the eyes of Paul, a sacrifice, the blood of Christ (in Rom. iii, 25 ; Eph. i, 7, 
etc.) is not therefore true blood, but denotes simply his violent death.—After 
his work was finished, the author learned that the identification of Christ’s 
body with the Church had been already proposed by Baur and adopted by 
Pfleiderer, Schmiedel, and especially by Hoffmann. The erudition of the 
professor of Christiania is not profound ; he does not suspect that his “‘ dis- 
covery ”’ is as old as Erasmus and Zwingli. 


fyi uCore xt 25; Luke xxii, 20: Mark iv, 24: Matt. xxvi, 27 : 
ToUTO TO 70- Totro Td T0- rotrd €oTw TOTO yap €or 
THPLOV THPLOV 76 alud pov 70 alud pov 
9 Kaun Siabjxn =.) Kav StabHjnn 
€oTiv 
évT@eu@atwart. e€vt@alyarlyov ris dcabjxns THs SuabhKns 
TO UTép UpaV TO ExXUYVoEvoy TO TEP troAAdV 
EXXUVVO[LEVOV. dmép ToAhay. Ex XUVVOLEVOY 
els ddeow apap- 
TLV. 


For the import of these texts from the point of view of the Eucharistic 
sacrifice, cf. Franzelin, De euchartstiae sacramento et sacrificto, Rome, 1868, 
th. xi, pp. 335-341. On the traditional meaning of the Church in relation 
to the sacrifice of the altar, cf. Rauschen, Zuchartstie und Busssakrament tn 
den ersten sechs Jahrhunderten der Kirche, Freiburg i. B., 1908, pp. 46-69 
(criticism of Wieland, Mensa und Confessto, Munich, 1906). Convenient 
review of the patristic testimony of the first two centuries in Frankland (0. cs¢., 


266 THE? THEOLOGY OF “ST; PAUL 


would offer obscurities. There are in it two metonymies, 
one of which takes the container for the contained, while the 
other takes the effect for the cause, the new covenant con- 
cluded in the blood of Christ for the blood of Christ itself 
which seals the new covenant. The first, however, is so 
commonly employed that ‘‘ this chalice’? awakens in the 
mind immediately the idea of a drink. Moreover, unless the 
vague demonstrative ‘‘ this ’’ were retained, the metonymical 
language would be obligatory. Jesus could not indeed say: 
‘This wine is my blood’’ without uttering an error and 
imposing on the faith of his disciples an unintelligible 
equation. The second metonymy is a little less usual; but it 
is explained when replaced in its context: the contents of a 
material cup not being able to be the covenant sealed in the 
blood, this must be the blood of the covenant.—Jesus Christ 
acts in the same way (acatrws) in both consecrations ; 
between the two acts there reigns a coniplete parallelism ; 
hence if, by virtue of the sacramental words, there is on the 
one hand the body of Christ, on the other hand, there will 
be his blood.—The manifest allusion to the account in 
Exodus leaves no more room for doubt. Moses sprinkling 
the people with the blood of the sacrifice, says: ‘‘ Behold the 
blood of the covenant.’’ The blood of the covenant and the 
covenant in the blood are, therefore, the same thing. 

Assuredly in both formulas the word of the Son of God is 
creative. The truth announced is not anterior to the enuncia- 
tion itself, as in ordinary affirmations; it is the product of it. 
But Jesus Christ had accustomed his disciples to these 
miracles of his speech, and he who healed by a word, by 
saying ‘‘ Your son is healed,’’ or ‘* You are freed from your 
infirmity,’’ deserved the same credence, when, by an 
analogous formula, he conferred the promised gift of his 
body and his blood. 

St Paul adds to the double consecration the command 
given by Christ to the apostles to perpetuate the Eucharist 
till the end of time. St Luke does not mention it until after 





pp. 3-29); but the author, an Anglican, does not admit the reality of the 
Eucharistic sacrifice: ‘‘ In the Eucharist is an oblation of God’s natural 
gifts, with offerings of thanks and praise upon an heavenly altar; but the 
divine Gifts are received, not offered ”’ (p. 111). 

1 The rationalistic critics who deny that the Eucharist was instituted by 
Jesus Christ do not dispute the fact that the primitive Church and the 
Apostles themselves believed in this institution. But they say that the 
Apostles misunderstood the meaning of the words of Jesus. What, then, did 
Jesus mean? According to Spitta (Zur Geschichte und Lttteratur des 
Urchristentums, Leipzig, 1893, vol.i, pp. 207-337: Die urchrestl. Tradttionen 
uber Ursprung und Sinn des Abendmahls), Jesus was so obsessed by his 
eschatological ideas that he thought he was present at a messianic feast, and 
invited his disciples to eat and drink at this feast (p. 333).—A. Jiilicher (Zur 
Geschichte der Abendmahlsfeier in der dltesten Kirche 1m the Theolog. 
Abhandlungen in honour of Weiasacker, Freiburg i. B., 1892, pp. 215-250} 


L 


THE SACRAMENTS 267 


the consecration of the bread, and the other two Synoptists 
pass it over in silence, considering it perhaps superfluous on 
account of the living tradition of the Church. 


2. By reason of the divine command and the explanation 
furnished by the Apostle, the Eucharist became a com- 
memorative rite: ‘‘ Do this in remembrance of me. For as 
often as you shall eat this bread and drink this chalice, you 
shall show the death of the Lord until he come.’’ But the 
eucharistic rite is not a simple commemoration of the sacri- 
fice of the cross; it is itself a commemorative sacrifice. St 
Paul does not say: ‘‘ This chalice is commemorative of the 
new covenant concluded on Calvary in my blood’’; he says: 
‘This chalice is itself the covenant’’; in other words: 
‘‘ The blood contained in this cup seals the covenant.’’ It 
is, therefore, the blood of a victim; and the rite which sheds 
it mystically will have the character of a sacrifice. This 
appears still more clearly from the parallel passage of St 
Luke: ‘‘ This chalice is the new covenant in my blood, 
which is shed for you.’’ St Luke does not say that the blood 
will be shed at the moment of the Passion: he says that the 
blood is shed now, at the hour of the accomplishment of 
the eucharistic rite; he even says still more forcibly that the 
chalice—that is to say, the blood contained in it—is shed for 
men. Taken separately, the formula of the consecration of 
the bread would not suggest the idea of sacrifice: ‘‘ This is 
my body, which is for you.’’ One could understand here 
the words: ‘‘ which is given you in nourishment,’’ instead 
of ‘* which is immolated for you.’’ And the more’ explicit 
text of St Luke would not wholly remove the doubt: ‘‘ This 
is my body which is given (or delivered) for you.’’ It iS 


. true, we might ask whether a body given in nourishment 


is not, by that very fact, an immolated body, and especially 
ere eee | ee ee 


believes that Jesus simply intended to make a parable ora concise comparison, 
as when he said: “ Iamthe Vine.” Filled with the thought of his approach- 
ing death, Jesus compared the bread to his body about to be tortured and the 
wine to his blood about to be shed. His words had no deeper significance 
and the Eucharist is due only to a misunderstanding.—J. Hoffmann (Das 
Abendmahl im Urchristentum, Berlin, 1903) affirms that the Eucharist 
originated in the repasts taken in common by the first disciples, awaiting 
together the parousia of the Lord, which was regarded as imminent. As the 
parousta became more and more delayed, they remembered the tragic ending 
of Jesus, and finally came to associate the daily meal with the recollection 
of the Last Supper. On that day the Eucharist was instituted. Subse- 
quently the idea of the redemptive death became connected with it—Andersen 
takes a step further in the path of paradox (Das Abendmahl, etc.). The 
dogmatic evolution of the Eucharist, he thinks, has followed this ascending 
route : (A) A religtous repast, the centre of which was, at first, God, and then, 
insensibly (in the apostolic era), Christ.—(B) Zattng the flesh of Christ (from 
the time of St Justin). —(C) Sacrifice of the flesh of Christ (from the time of 
St Cyprian). Where will the fancy of the historians of dogma end ? 


268 THE TFHEOLOGY 2 OFSSD PAUL 


whether the words ‘‘ given for you”? really signify ‘“‘ given 
in nourishment,’’ and whether they do not signify, as every- 
where else, the act by which Christ offers himself as a 
victim. But a certain obscurity would always remain, even 
apart from the parallelism. 

Another passage of St Paul furnishes us with additional 
light. Wishing to show to the Corinthians that participating 
in idolatrous banquets is forbidden, whatever intention one 
may bring to them, because it‘is a scandal, a danger, and a 
formal act of idolatry, the Apostle appeals to their con- 
sciences: ‘‘I speak as to wise men: judge ye yourselves 
what I say. The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it 
not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread 
which we break, is it not the communion of the body of 
Christ? Because there is one bread, we, being many, are 
one body, for we partake of that one bread. Behold Israel 
according to the flesh. Are not they that eat of the sacrifices 
partakers of the altar?’’ And St Paul, deducing a code of 
morality from this doctrine, concludes in these words: ‘‘ The 
things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils 
and not to God. I would not that you should be made 
partakers with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord 
and the cup of devils; you cannot be partakers of the table 
of the Lord and of the table of devils.’’1 If the arguments 
of the Apostle are not fallacious, the eucharistic communion 
is for Christians what the eating of food sacrificed to idols 
was for the Gentiles and what the sacred repast was for the 
Jews. Now the sacred banquet has a religious significance : 
it constitutes an act of worship in that it is a complement of 
the sacrifice and unites the faithful with the sacrificing 
priest, with the altar where the victim was immolated and 
with the victim itself. 


IV—Hoty ORDER 


The rite of the inauguration of the sacred ministers of the 
Church was always and everywhere the laying on of hands. 
Indeterminate in itself, this rite receives its precise significa- 
tion from the circumstances which surround it or from the 
words which accompany it. We see in Scripture that hands 
are laid on, by the superior to bless, by the worker of 
miracles to heal, by the apostles to confer the Holy Ghost, 
and by those endowed with ecclesiastical authority to com- 
municate the power with which they are invested.2. The idea 


* 1 Cor. x, 15-21. Cf. Vol. I, pp. 117, 118. 

* In the New Testament the only example of a benediction through the 
laying on of hands is Matt. xix, 13. Everywhere else hands are laid on 
either to restore health or life (Matt. ix, 18 ; Mark v, 23; xvi,18; Luke iv, 40; 
Acts 1x, 12, 17 ; xxviii, 8), or to confer the Holy Ghost or the power of Order 
( Acts vi, 6 ; vili, 17 ; xix, 6; 1 Tim. iv, 14 ; 2 Tim. i, 6 ; Heb. vl, 2). 


THE SACRAMENTS 269 


common to these four modes is the transmission of a spiritual 
gift, a supernatural favour, or a sacred power. 

All the faithful had concurred in the election of the seven 
Hellenist deacons, but it was the apostles only who laid their 
hands upon them. It was a question of rendering them fit 
for a sacred function of a similar nature, for the celebration 
of the agape was still. closely associated with the Eucharist. 
Hence care had been taken that the candidates should be 
filled with the Holy Spirit, and the laying on of hands had 
been performed amid public prayers; the ceremony being 
finished, the Seven, besides the care of the tables, had assumed 
the ministry of preaching and the administration of baptism, 
but without claiming to confer the Holy Spirit, which was an 
act exclusively reserved for the apostles. Their institution 
had had a religious character, and their power was of the 
spiritual order, although remaining subordinate. 

The laying on of hands was used also for the intermediate 
degree of the priesthood. When Paul writes to Timothy : 
‘** Lay not hands lightly upon any man,’’? he speaks particu- 
larly of elders, in the ecclesiastical sense, and not of men 
advanced in age. 

Finally, the same rite—if we exclude the words or prayers 
which accompanied it—served equally for the higher grade 
of the hierarchy ; and here the texts are a little more explicit. 
We can hardly resist the impression that the laying on of 
hands, described in Acts xiii, had for its object to transmit 
to Barnabas and Saul the supreme power of Orders. A 
simple farewell benediction would not have been surrounded 
with so much solemnity, preceded by fasts and accomplished 
during the liturgy, by the command of the Holy Spirit. The 
missionaries are specially designated for the conversion of 
the Gentiles— that is to say, for the foundation of new 
churches in which the power of Orders is indispensable to 
them. In fact, immediately after, we see them appointing 
elders (mpecBvtepovs) in the cities where they have estab- 
lished Christian communities. Probably no one would have 
understood the passage in the Acts otherwise had it not 
been for the difficulty of finding a suitable minister in 
Antioch. If Barnabas, who was, according to all appear- 
ances, the principal person in that church, was not a bishop, 
how can we suppose that the other prophets and teachers 
named after him were so rather than he? On the other 
hand, St Luke does not mention the presence of the apostles 
in Antioch in this episode. It is true, it can be said that he 
had no need to mention it, if it was recognized, as every- 
thing leads us to believe, that a power is never conferred 
except by the one who possesses it. Even if it were a 
question here of a simple benediction, the difficulty would 


1 Acts ii, 1-6 * 1 Tim. v, 22. 


270 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


still remain, since a benediction descends from a superior 
and does not proceed from inferiors or from equals. 

With the consecration of Timothy by St Paul we are on 
firmer ground. The Apostle writes to his disciple : ‘‘ Neglect 
not the grace (xdpicua) that is in thee, which was given thee 
by prophecy (or on account of prophecies), with the imposi- 
tion of the hands of the college of presbyters.—I admonish 
thee that thou stir up the grace of God (xdpicpa), which is 
in thee by the imposition of my hands.’’! We have here an 


te bin tiv i Ow Salinas, Coy: 
M7 apedet rob xapioparos "Avaptprvioxw ce avalwarupeiv 76 
xaptopa Tod Beod, 
6 €000n cor d1a mpodnretas & €orw év aot 
peta eribecews t&v xetpav Tod mpe-. did THS emBecews TAY xELpAY pov. 
oBurepiov. Od yap ESwxev Hyiv 6 Geos, KrA. 


According to these two texts, compared together: (A) Timothy actually 
possesses a charisma (6 €orw €v got) whitch has been given him previously 
once for all (6 €866y got); (B) in view of or on account of the prophectes 
which designated him for this office (81a zpod¢nreias); (C) by the laying on 
of the hands of the Apostle (8:a rijs émBécews Trav xeupdv pov); (D) with 
the co-operation of the presbyters who had also imposed hands (pera ém- 
Oécews THY xelpdSv tod mpeoPurepiov). 

(A) The meaning of charisma is explained by 2 Tim. i, 7: Mon enim 
dedtt nobis Deus sptritum timorts ; sed virtutis et dilectionis et sobrie- 
tatts. The spirit of power, of love and of moderation—such is the charisma 
which the disciple is to st#7 up in the dangerous combination of circumstances 
in which he and his master find themselves. This charisma is dormant but 
not dead, for it is the principle of the grace of a calling; it is, therefore, 
indestructible, like that grace itself. 

(B) The clause 8:4 wpodyretas is ambiguous. If mpodnredas is regarded 
as the accusative plural—which appears more satisfactory from every point 
of view—the meaning will be “‘ on account of the prophecies ’’—that is to say, 
the utterances concerning him made by the faithful endowed with the 
charisma of prophecy. Cf. 1 Tim. i, 18: Commendo tibi, secundum praece- 
dentes tn te prophetias, ut milites in tllis militiam bonam. If it be taken in 
the genitive singular, as the Vulgate has it, prophecy (that is to say, the pro- 
phetic utterance, as above, or the prophetic charisma possessed by Timothy) 
would be the determining, and so to speak the moral, cause (8:4) of the pro- 
motion of Timothy. 

(C) The clause 81a ris émBécews r&v yetpSv pov indicates without any 
ambiguity the instrumental cause (physical or moral according to the classifi- 
cation) of the production of the special charisma ; this is the sacramental rite 
of the laying on of hands. 

(D) Finally, the use of the preposition perd instead of 8:d leads us not to 
attribute to the imposition of hands on the part of the presbyterate the same 
value as to the laying on of Paul’s hands ; the latter is active and produces the 
effect (6a), while the former is only concomitant (perd) ; one is essential to 
the rite, the other enhances its brilliancy. 

The Council of Trent (Sess. xxiii, cap. 3) quotes 2 Tim. i, 6 as an in- 
dubitable proof that Holy Order is a sacrament. Timothy had received this 
Order in all its fulness, since he had the power of laying on hands in his turn 
(1 Tim. v, 22). But one ought not to deduce from our texts that the episcopal 
consecration, as distinct from sacerdotal ordination, is a sacrament. It is, 
indeed, very probable that all the powers of Order were conferred on Timothy 
by one stngle imposition of hands. Nothing is opposed to this in theory, as 
Bellarmine recognizes, and Petavius thinks that such was the practice of the 
early Church. 


THE SACRAMENTS 271 


external rite—the laying on of hands—and an internal grace 
produced by the rite. What is this grace, this charisma? 
Evidently it is not the purely gratuitous gift which the Holy 
Spirit bestows or withdraws at will, which is not permanent, 
and which no one has the right to call into being or revive. 
Nor is it, as some think, the episcopal character, the power 
of Order, for this has no need of being revived, since it is 
incapable of diminution or decline. This charisma is rather 
the supernatural fitness received for the worthy exercise of 
a sacred ministry ; something like what we call the grace of 
a calling—that is to say, the totality of spiritual gifts and the 
right to the actual graces which the duties of the episcopate 
require. Although associated with the character and power 
of Holy Order, it is nevertheless distinct from them. While 
the character is indelible and the power inalienable, this 
charisma may become enfeebled through a want of effort or 
of vigilance; if it does not reach the point of extinction, it 
needs at least to be rekindled. St Paul indicates very plainly 
the nature of this charisma, when he adds: ‘‘ For God hath 
not given us the spirit of fear, but [a spirit] of power, and 
of love, and of sobriety.’’ This charisma brings with it, 
therefore, an increase of internal grace, together with the 
actual graces made necessary by the episcopal office. Now 
all this is conferred ‘‘ by (6d) the laying on of the hands ’’ 
of the Apostle, yet not without the co-operation and assist- 
ance (pera) of the presbyteral college of Ephesus if, as is 
probable, it is at Ephesus that the consecration took place. 
We have, therefore, in the ordination of Timothy, the three 
principal elements of what the Church to-day calls a sacra- 
ment: first, an external rite—the laying on of hands; then a 
permanent grace(xdpiopa)—the source (produced by this rite) 
of various graces of condition (64); and lastly, an internal 
grace corresponding to the symbol of the external rite, 
which symbol is determined in its signification by a number 
of circumstances, such as the prophetic designation and the 
mission to which Timothy was destined. Divine institution, 
with its direct or indirect promulgation by Jesus Christ, acts, 
of course, when it is a question of imparting grace to a rite. 


V— MARRIAGE 


To the quotation from Genesis: ‘‘ The man shall leave his 
father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two 
shall be one flesh,’’ St Paul adds the following reflection : 
‘‘ This is a great mystery (pvarnprov) ; but I speak of Christ 
and the Church.’’! According to the Council of Trent, the 

1 Eph. v, 32: Td pvoripwv tobro péya orl, éyw 8é rAéyw els Xprorov 
cat eis tHv é€xxAnolav. What is the mystery—that is, the Azdden sense— 
indicated by the Apostle? One of three things: either the mystery is the 


272 THE, THEOLOGY" OF “SiGPAUL 


Sacrament of marriage is suggested in this text.! That is 
the most appropriate word. In the absence of an express 
affirmation, there is here an indication which the theologian 
must take into account. 

Not that nothing can be deduced from the Latin transla- 
tion: Sacramentum hoc magnum est. The biblical meaning 
of sacramentum (pvoryprov) is not sacrament. It is either a 
secret design of God regarding the salvation of men or a 
word or deed containing a symbolical signification. The 
reasoning, based upon the text of the Apostle, to prove that 
marriage is a real sacrament, is much more complex, and, 
whatever pains may be taken to support it, there will always 
remain in it some weak points. That the conjugal union has 
a sacred character—that it is a sacrament in the widest 
signification of the word—no one disputes. In the opinion 
of St Paul the primitive institution of marriage or, what 
amounts to nearly the same thing, the story of Genesis 
relating to this institution, is a great mystery which 
symbolizes the union of Christ and his Church, and is con- 
sequently the sign of something eminently holy: Sacra- 
mentum hoc magnum est, id est sacrae rei signum, scilicet 
conjunctionis Christi et Ecclesiae, says St Thomas. If here 
we have a real type, marriage would be on this ground a 
sacrament as rightfully as circumcision and the sacrifices of 
the ancient Law. We are still very far from the visible sign 
instituted by Jesus Christ to produce the grace which it 
signifies. The efficacious production of the grace once 
proved, the divine institution would certainly be naturally 
deduced from the fact that it is the prerogative of God alone 
to add grace to an external rite; and the promulgation by 
Christ would follow as a corollary, since Jesus Christ is the 
only and universal mediator of the new covenant. Thence- 
forth the principal question is to know if our text allows us 
to conclude that a Christian marriage, as soon as contracted, 
confers sanctifying grace. No Catholic theologian has main- 
tained the affirmative of this question with more scholastic 
subtlety and scriptural erudition than Father Palmieri. His 
reasoning can be summed up as follows. The figurative 
rites of the new law are by their nature practical and not 
speculative—that is to say, they produce the grace which 
they signify ; now Christian marriage, according to St Paul 





text of Genesis itself, as typical ; or it is marriage, as figurative paar to 
its primitive institution ; or it is the union of Christ and the Church. The 
last hypothesis cannot stand, for it implies a tiresome tautology. This 
mystery—namely, the union of Christ and the Church—is great: I mean rela- 
tively to Christ and the Church. In reality the other two hypotheses form 
only one; for whether it be the biblical text or the thing expressed by the 
text, which constitutes the mystery, matters little. 
1 Sess. xxiv, Paulus innutt. 


THE SACRAMENTS 273 


typifies the union of Christ and his Church; hence it produces 
the grace signified by this union. If the Christian marriage 
in facto esse imposes supernatural obligations on the parties 
to it, it necessarily confers in fieri an internal grace propor- 
tionate to these obligations. 

It will be objected that the symbol of the mysterious hymen 
of Christ and his Church is marriage in itself, not Christian 
marriage; and therefore that, if the preceding argument 
proved anything, it would be that every marriage is a 
sacrament. But this objection can be met. In the first 
place, Christian marriage—St Paul here speaks only of this 
because he is addressing the faithful exclusively—imposes on 
the husband and wife special duties, requiring the assistance 
of special graces. Christian consorts, in their mutual rela- 
tions, must model themselves after Christ and his Church; 
on the one side respectful submission to the point of sacrifice, 
on the other, devoted love till death. This source of super- 
natural obligations presupposes a corresponding source of 
supernatural praces; and St Paul argues well, in presenting 
this hypothesis, when he adjures them to realize in their 
own lives the marriage of the Church and Christ, of which 
their own union is the emblem. In the second place, every 
marriage can indeed be a sign, yet for all that may not be 
an efficacious sign, as Christian marriage is. The rites of 
the new Law are commemorative, not prophetic; they do not 
look towards a potential future, but towards the past, which 
they revive; they are practical, not speculative ; they do not 
merely represent grace, but produce it. If circumcision had 
been maintained by Jesus Christ as a sign of his Covenant 
with humanity, there is every reason to believe that it would 
have become a sacrament in the strict sense of the word. If 
its aim and significance had been changed, and if it had been 
turned towards the past and not towards the future, it would 
have been capable of producing effectively the grace of the 
Covenant; but, having been left to itself, as an inferior and 
uncouth rite, it lost all its value after the death of Christ. 
Similarly marriage, which was formerly the type of the union 
of Christ and his Church, changes its signification when this 
union is consummated on Golgotha; from being prophetic, 
it becomes commemorative; from being speculative, it 
becomes practical; from being inert, it becomes efficacious. 

Nevertheless, for the argument drawn from our text to be 
decisive, it would be necessary to prove: that the symbolism 
indicated by St Paul is not a creation of his mind or a 
mystical relation imagined by him—ego autem dico—but 
that it really exists a parte ret from the fact of a positive act 
of will on the part of God; that this symbol is not a simple 
prophetic type, but a practical and commemorative sign; 


that the grace attached to marriage does not come merely 
1L: 18 


274 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


from the new obligations inherent in the conjugal state— 
as happens, for example, in the religious state—but that it is 
conferred instrumentally by the very rite of the matrimonial 
contract in fiert. Now all this is suggested rather than 
affirmed in the Apostle’s words. When we know before- 
hand that marriage is a sacrament, we can find in this text a 
more or less clear allusion to the sacramental rite; otherwise 
we should perhaps be wiser not to look for it there. 


CHAPTER III 
THE CHURCH 


I—Tue PauLinE CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH 


I. The Names of the Church. 2. The Church of God. 
3. Notes of the Church. 


I. HE chosen race was sometimes represented as 
the vineyard guarded and cultivated by God 
with jealous care, as in the famous allegory of 
Isaias, to which the Synoptists refer,! some- 
times as the vine transplanted into Canaan and 

susceptible of unlimited growth: 


The shadow of it covered the hills, 

And the branches thereof were as the cedars of God; 
It stretched forth its branches unto the sea 

And its boughs unto the river.* 


St John gives a different turn to this symbol so dear to the 
prophets ;* St Paul substitutes for it the olive-tree.4 Paul 
indeed conceives of baptism as a graft which, grafting us on 
Christ, makes us draw up the divine sap; it was natural, 
therefore, for him to conceive of the Church under the figure 
of an olive-tree plunging its roots into the depths of the 
ancient system and growing infinitely by the addition of new 
branches. The allegory is clear: the ‘‘ sacred root and 
blessed trunk’’ are the patriarchs; the olive-tree is the 
Church, growing out of the Synagogue by a kind of. vital 


* Is. v, 2-7. Cf. Matt. xxi, 28-41 ; Mark xli, {-9; Luke xx, 9-16. The 
idea most similar to this in St Paul is 1 Cor. lil, 9: Dest agricultura. 

* Ps. Ixxix, 11, 12. The vine was the queen of plants (Judges ix, 12). 
Pliny said of the vine : Mudlo fine crescit. 

* Os. x, 1; Jer. ii, 21 ; Is. xxvii, 3-6 ; Cant. i, 6; viii, 12, etc. In St John 
(xv, I-5) it is no longer Israel that is the vine, but the epithet “‘ true ’’ shows 
the allusion to the old allegory. 

* Rom. xi, 16-24. The new symbol adopted by St Paul can be justified 
by Jer. xi, 16; Os. xiv, 7-9. | While the vine is propagated by suckers and 
shoots, the wild olive is grafted with branches from the cultivated olive. 
St Paul describes the reverse procedure, as Origen has remarked in his 
commentary (Rufinus trans.): Sed nec hoc quidem lateat nos in hoc loco, 
quod non €0 ordine Apostolus olivae et oleastri similitudinem posutt quo apud 
agricolas habetur. Illi enim magts olivam oleastro inserere et non olivae 
oleastrum solent ; Paulus vero apostolica anctoritate ordine commutato res 
magts causis quam causas rebus aptavit. It is therefore useless to collect 
in antiquity examples of the proceeding described by St Paul. However, 
see Ramsay, The olive-tree and the wsiid-olive, in the Expositor, 6th series 
vol. xi, 1905, pp. 16-34, 152-160. 


275 


276 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


process; the boughs are the members of the Church, some 
(the Christians of Jewish extraction) having come naturally 
upon the true olive, the others (the Gentile Christians) 
grafted from the wild stock. It is unbelief that breaks off 
the former; it is faith that engrafts the latter ; but the broken 
branches always retain the hope of being again restored, and 
the grafted boughs must always fear being rejected in their 
turn. 

Israel was also represented as the house, the kingdom, and 
the people of Jehovah; Jehovah was their father, king, and 
God. The Church, the heir of the Synagogue, will also be 
all this pre-eminently. The starting-point of the metaphor 
‘“ House of Jehovah ’’ seems to be the idea of a family rather 
than a house, although the thought of a building appears 
clearly in some passages.! The Apostle rarely applies to the 
Church militant the notion of the Jewish theocracy, for he 
generally gives the ‘‘ kingdom of God’’ an eschatological 
meaning.? Nor does he call it ‘‘ the people of God,’’ unless 
it be in reminiscences of the Old Testament.°* 

It was the great honour of the holy nation to be the 
daughter and spouse of Jehovah. But, in passing over into 
the new order of things, the title of child changes its 
character; from being collective, as it had been, it becomes 
individual; thenceforth it is no more the Church which is the 
daughter of God; it is the children of the Church who possess 
the adoptive sonship, personally. The name of spouse 
ought naturally to have followed a similar evolution. But 
this symbol of marriage which plays so great a role in the 
prophets® finds little room in the New Testament. St John 
and St Paul remember it, the former when describing the 
marriage of the Lamb,® the latter when he calls marriage a 
great mystery ‘‘in respect to Christ and his Church,’’? and 


1 Num. xii, 7; Os. viii, 1; Jer. xii,7. Cf. Heb. ili, 6: CArtstus tanguam 
filius in domo sua, quae domus sumus nos. The domestict (olxetor) fidet 
(Gal. vi, 10) and the domestici Det (Eph. ii, 19) belong to the same order of 
ideas. This last text offers a curious example of the gradual passage from 
the idea of a family (verse 19) to that of a building (with foundations and 
corner-stone, verses 20-21) and of a temple (verse 22) of which the faithful are 
the living stones (cuvorxodopetcbe). The Christians are the temple of God 
because God dwells within them (2 Cor. vi, 16), but this habitation of God 
suggests the idea of a material construction which is built and can be destroyed 
(1 Cor. iii, 9-17). 

* On the kingdom of God, see pp. 376-81. 

? 2 Cor. vi, 16, quoting Lev. xxi, 11, 12, with a possible allusion to Ezech. 
xxxvii, 27. Cf. Rom. ix, 25, 26, quoting Os. ii, 25 and i, 10; Titus il, 14, 
alluding to Ex. xix, 5. 

« Rom. viii, 14: Outcumque spiritu Det aguntur i sunt filit Det. The 
adoptive sonship is the individual prerogative of Christians. Rom. viii, 15- 
23; Gal. iv, 5; Eph.i, 5. Instead of vids @eod, St Paul says also TEKVOV, 
preferred by St John. 

5 Especially Osee. ® Apoc. xxi, 6-9 ; xxii, 17. 

lat pliey.32. ¢C7.DD. 271-2, 


THE CHURCH 277 


when he attributes to himself the functions and the feelings 
of the bridesman entrusted with the duty of leading his 
affianced bride to Christ.1 But the prophets’ idea of a 
jealous God did not pass on to the evangelists; hence the 
allegory of marriage did not follow its normal development, 
which would have made of the individual soul the bride of 
Christ. There are, however, in St Paul and the Gospel 
allusions enough to justify the language of the mystical 
writers. The mystery of the incarnation was needed—a 
God made man and a man made God, two natures infinitely 
distinct yet joined without confusion in the unity of one and 
the same Person—to give a faint idea of a union still more 
intimate than that of husband and wife. The minds of men 
were already prepared for it by the turn which the allegory 
of the vine had “taken in the mouth of the Saviour. In 
promising the Eucharist, and after having instituted it, Jesus’ 
had spoken of his union with communicants in terms which 
implied an identity of operations, functions, and life. His 
words laid the foundation of the doctrine of the mystical 
body which St Paul took up, elaborated and studied under all 
its aspects, finally making it the culminating point of his 
moral system and the centre of his teaching. 

The body of Christ and the Church are thenceforth the 
most characteristic names of the spouse of Jesus Christ: the 
former title belongs to her rightfully, the latter she inherits 
partly from the Synagogue. 


2. In the Old Testament two almost synonymous words 
(qahal and ‘edah) designated the religious assembly of the 
chosen people under the invisible presidency of Jehovah repre- 
sented by his mandatories. The Septuagint and the later trans- 
lators—Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion—usually render 
the first of these terms by éxxAyoia, the second by cvvaywyn. 
But, at the time of the Gospel, cvvaywyy signified the edifice 
in which the Jews assembled on Sabbath days, and it appears 

also to have been generally used for the meetings them- 
selves. For the Christian community this was an imperative 
reason for adopting the other term, and in order to distin- 
guish itself from the Synagogue, it called itself Church. To 
believe that this word was borrowed from the turbulent 


1 2 Cor. xi, 2: Aemulor enim vos Det aemulatione ; despondt entm vos 
uni viro, virginem castam, exhibere Christo. The Church of Corinth 
collectively, is the spouse. Paul has betrothed it to Christ, in the quality 
of bridesman, an intermediary entrusted in the East with matrimonal 
negotiations. As such, he is jealous w#th the ealousy even of God, whom he 
represents and whose sentiments he shares. 

2 Parable of the ten virgins awaiting the bridegroom (Matt. xxv, 1-10) ; 
Jesus Christ compared to the bridegroom (vidios, Matt. ix, 15 ; Mark il, 19, 
20; Luke v, 34, 35 ; John iii, 29) ; moreover, the texts of the Apocalypse cited 
above. 


278 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


assemblies of the Greek democracies is to sacrifice uselessly 
all the probabilities and all the positive data of history to the 
spirit of system. 

By reason of its historical origin, this word had first to 
designate the Church universal, before being applied to 
individual churches; and this is indeed exactly what we 
maintain. Jesus Christ proposes to found upon Peter his 
Church, which is necessarily unique; St Luke also knows 
only one Church, in spite of the diversity of places and 
nations, which he sees on his travels; St Paul himself re- 
members how he had persecuted the Church of God, and 
when he identifies this Church with the body of Christ, or 
makes Christ its Head, he plainly excludes all plurality. To 
specify local churches, he will say, for example, ‘“‘ the 
church which is at Corinth,’’ or, by derivation, ‘‘ the church 
of the Thessalonians ’’; unless the Church, in the singular, 
is indicated by the context.1 The Church is neither the 
aggregate of the believers, nor the sum total of the individual 


1 The word éxxAnoia occurs in the New Testament 125 times (of these 63 
times in St Paul and 23 times in the Acts). The Gospels do not contain it, 
except in Matt. xvi, 18 and xviii, 17 (4s). In St John, where it appears 
23 times (20 times in the Apoc. in regard to the letters to the churches of 
Asia and three times in 3 John), its use has nothing remarkable in it. It is 
found once in the Epistle of James (v, 14: /nfirmatur quis in vobts ? In- 
ducat presbyteros Ecclesiae) ; twice in Hebrews, but only in a quotation from 
the Old Testament (ii, 12), and in an allusion to the ancient order of things 
(xii, 23). It is, therefore, hardly anywhere except in the Acts and St Paul 
that its significance can be studied. 

The word “ church”’ enjoys, in the Acts, a great variety of meanings. It is 
(a) the profane assembly of the Greek cities (classic sense, Acts xix, 39, 41); 
(4) the people of Israel (in Stephen’s speech, vii, 38); (c) the Christian 
assembly (xiv, 27 ; xv, 3, 4, 22) ; (d) a particular church (xi, 22, 26 ; xiii, 1 ; 
xiv, 23; xvill, 22; xx, 17), the churches (xv, 41; xvi, 5); (¢) the Church 
(v, 11; viii, 1, 3; ix, 31; xil, 1, 5; xix, 32) or the Church of God (xx, 28) ; 
but this last text, which recalls Paul’s language, is in fact taken from a 
speech of St Paul. 

In St Paul the word ‘‘ church ’’ has become technical and is used only of 
the Christian Church. It can signify the universal Church or a particular 
church ; sometimes, exceptionally, the assembled church. (a) The universal 
Church is called simply the Church, especially in the Epistles of the captivity 
(Phil iii, 6; Colii) 18) 24.3 Eph.1, 22; 111,30, 21 5 v,23,24;25,20,27, 20.9a0, 
1 Cor. xii, 28 ; 1 Tim. v, 16) or the Church of God (Gal. 1, 13 ; 1 Cor. x, 32; 
xv, 9; 1 Tim. iii, 5, 15).—(4) The local church is designated by the context 
or by the mention of the place: the church which ts at (Rom. xvi, 1 ; 1 Cor. i, 2 ; 
2 Cor. i, 1), the church which ts tn (a private house, Rom. xvi, 5 ; 1 Cor. xv, 
19 ; Col. iv, 15 ; Philem. 2), more rarely the church of (Col. iv, 16 ; 1 Thess. i, 1 ; 
2 Thess. i, 1).—(c) The plural is used to signify the totality of the churches, 
either absolutely (Rom. xvi, 16; 1 Cor. vii, 17; xi, 16, 22 ; xiv, 33; 2 Thess. i, 4), 
or with a restriction expressed. or implied (Rom. xvi, 4 ; 1 Cor. xvi, 1 ; 2 Cor. 
viii, 1, etc.) ; also every church (1 Cor.iv, 17), no church (Phil. iv, 15).—(d) In 
certain cases éxxAnota, again approaching its original sense, denotes the 
church actually assembled, the religious meeting of the faithful, 1 Cor. xiv, 31- 

5: Mulieres in Ecclesia taceant.... Turpe est entm multert logut in 
Ecclesia. Cf.1 Cor. xi, 18: ouvvepxopévwv tyudv ev éxxAnoia. This is no 
question of the sacred building. 


THE CHURCH 279 


communities, but a moral being to which unity is essential. 
*“ Not only is the part in the whole, but the whole is in the 
part.’’* This is why St Paul addresses ‘‘ the Church of God 
which is at Corinth’’; in fact, whether it is at Corinth, at 
Ephesus, or elsewhere, it is always the Church; and it is 
always the Church of God, since the Church is essentially 
one. This is also why the Apostle calls a particular church 
the temple of the Holy Ghost and the bride of Christ, because 
that particular church is only an extension of the universal 
church, and would keep the name of church only by an 
abuse of language if it were separated from the one and 
only Church. 


3. The metaphors which serve to designate the Church 
well indicate its characteristics and what we should call to- 
day its notes. As the mystical body of Christ, the Church 
iseone ; as being his bride, it is holy ; as the temple of God, it 
has for its foundation the apostles; as the kingdom of 
heaven, it is Catholic or universal. But Paul does not make 
it a point to be constant in the use of his metaphors; he 
passes continually from one to the other; and this mixture of 
different figures would engender some confusion, if we 
interpreted them with the strictness of a purist. Let us 
rapidly survey these four characteristics of unity, catholicity, 
apostolicity, and holiness, without going outside of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians where these traits are especially 
marked.? 

Our common incorporation into Christ is the great principle 
of unity. To one single head belongs one body; otherwise 
we have a monstrosity. As there is only one natural Christ, 
it is impossible that there should be more than one mystical 
Christ. 


Be careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One 
body and one spirit ; as you are called in one hope of your calling ; 

_ one Lord, one faith, one baptism ; one God and Father of all, who is 

above all, and through all, and in us all.® 

1 The formula is Harnack’s (Entstehung und Entwickelung der Kirchen- 
verfassung,etc., Leipzig, 1910, p. 36). A little later (p. 37): Ste (die Kirche) 
tst also eine himmlische Grosse,d.h.tm Grunde nicht Einselgemeinde, sondern 
Erscheinung des Ganzen in dem Tetl. Cremer (Biblischtheol. Worterbuch?, 
1902, pp. 548-550) shows that the notion of the universal Church preceded 
that of the local church. 

2 Cf. Méritan, L’eccléstologte de l’ép. aux Ephéstens (Rev. b1b/., 1898, 
pp. 343-369). In this article, written in regard to two Anglican works 
Ch. Gore, The Eptstle to the Ephestans, London, 1898, and Hort, Zhe 
Christian Ecclesta, London, 1897), the author studies only the two notes of 
unity and catholicity. 

® Eph. iv, 3-6: Lmovddlovres rypeiv ryv évdtnta rod mvedparos ev 7H 
ovvidopw THs Eipyrvns’ : 

év odpa, 
kai év []vedpua, 


280 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Seven elements—three intrinsic, three external, and one 
transcendental—enter into the constitution of the Church and 
bind its unity closely. The Church in its material principle 
is one, since it is one single body; it is one in its formal 
principle, since it is animated by one Spirit; it is one in its 
tendency and final cause, which is the glory of God and of 
his Christ through the happiness of the elect. It is one also 
by the authority which governs it; one by the common faith 
which serves it as a rule and an external standard; one by 
its efficient cause, the baptismal rite, which gives it existence 
and growth. St Paul sums up these six principles of union 
in one phrase: ‘‘ You are all one in Christ Jesus.’’! There 
remains the seventh principle: ‘‘ The God and Father of all 
men.’’ It is not clear at first what relation can exist between 
the unity of God and the unity of the Church. But the 
Apostle elsewhere defines his thought. He informs us that 
all mankind is destined hereafter to form one family in the 
house of a common Father, one theocracy under the sceptre 
of one king.? From this point of view the unity of the 
Church is identified with both oneness and catholicity. 

The word Catholic, quite common to profane writers from 
the time of Aristotle, is not in the Bible; but, after St 
Ignatius of Antioch, it serves to express a very biblical idea 
—the universality of the Church. This universality was 
announced by the prophets, and the apostles are charged to 
make it real by preaching the Gospel to the very limits of the 
world. Jewish exclusiveness has come to an end; the ancient 
theocracy has had its day; the régime of privilege has 
ceased: ‘‘Is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also 
of the Gentiles?’’* These despised Gentiles, strangers to the 
covenants, strangers to the promises, without Christ, without 
God, without hope, are now blended into one single national 
body together with the chosen people. No more strangers 





Kabas Kal exAHOnte ev pid eAmids ris KAjoews bpav 

els Kuptos, 

pula mors, 

év Barriopa’ 7 

els Oeds kat rarhp mavrwy, 6 emt ndvrwy Kat Sia mAdvTwv Kal ev maou. 

As usual Paul bases his moral teaching on dogma: he recommends his 
readers to maintain “ the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” in con- 
sideration of the multiple unity which is of the essence of the Church. Our 
Epistle is the only one where this abstract word ‘‘ unity ”’ (€vérys) is employed. 

* Gal. iii, 28: wavres yap tyeis els ore ev X. I. The Apostle does not 
say év (one thing) but els (“‘ one moral person’’). 

* The idea of a kingdom is not rare in the Epistles, and the same is true of 
the idea of a house; but the most explicit text, from the point of view which 
here concerns us, is the following passage in which the Christians are repre- 
sented as one family whose members nothing can or ought to separate 
(Eph. ii, 14-22). Allare oupzodtrat and ofxetot rod Oeod. 

® Rom. iii,29. Cf. x, 12, etc. 


THE CHURCH 281 


and foreigners; all are members of the Church, without 
distinction of origin; all are henceforth ‘‘ fellow-citizens with 
the saints and the household of God.’’! The whole world is 
hereafter to form only one kingdom, one city, one house, of 
which God, with Christ his representative, will be the sole 
King, the sole Chief, the sole Father. 

From the moment that it is certain that God extends his 
plans of redemption to all men and that he wishes to save 
them only by incorporating them into Christ, it follows of 
necessity that the Church is one in essence and universal in 
its destination. It is one and universal because it is the bride 
of Christ, including potentially the whole human race: 
because it is the body of Christ, in whom all those, who died 
in the first Adam, are to be born again; and because it is the 
kingdom of God, the true Israel, succeeding to the ancient 
theocracy the particularism of which it destroys. 

If St Paul stopped there, his teaching would have in it 
nothing very peculiar. Its originality consists in the fact 
that he derives these two attributes precisely from his notion 
of the Church. The Church, as he conceives it, is essentially 
one and universal, in other words, Catholic, because it 
eliminates everything that is opposed to unity and uni- 
versality, by suppressing’, from a religious point of view, all 
national, social, and individual differences, together with all 
inequalities of rights and privileges, by infusing into all 
its members a common current of life and action possess- 
ing inexhaustible energy. ‘‘ You are all the children of God 
by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been 
baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew 
nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither 
male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.*—There 
is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, 
Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and 
in all.’’> The differences of race, education, social rank, 
even sex, have disappeared. The quality of a child of God 
has effaced all those distinctions. No one, therefore, is now 
excluded from the new system, since Scythians, the most 
barbarous of barbarians, are admitted to it. 

It was not enough to carry the message of salvation to the 
confines of the world‘ and to preach the Gospel to every 
creature under heaven ;° it was also necessary to remove the 
obstacles which would prevent the perfect blending of those 
heterogeneous elements. The most formidable of these 
obstacles was Jewish particularism. The Jewish theocracy, 
national by nature and expressly closed to certain foreign 
nations, did not aspire to be the religion of the whole world ; 
for, in ceasing to be national, it would lose its character of a 


an Ppl, 19; 2 Gal. ili, 26-28. 2. Col ib eEs. 
‘ Rom. x, 18. SON ie ROLE 


Ap THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


privileged institution. It could indeed increase by the addi- 
tion of new adepts, but the humiliating inferiority in which it 
kept them and the degrees of difference which it left between 
them, not to mention the prohibitions which it pronounced, 
showed clearly that it did not at all aim at making the whole 
race one religious family. The barrier of the Law, which 
had formerly protected the monotheistic faith of the chosen 
people, kept it thereafter in a fatal isolation. Jesus Christ, 
in order to assure the unity and universality of his Church, 
had first of all to break down the wall of separation. He 
nailed, therefore, to the cross the ancient handwriting which 
resisted the fusion of the peoples of the earth;* he also 
opened wide the doors of the new order to the nations which 
until then had been afar off; and thus all men become by the 
same right fellow-citizens of one kingdom and members of 
one family ; in a word, all, reconciled with one another and 
with God, are united in Christ in one mystical body.? 

One and Catholic in essence, the Church must be also 
apostolic. Paul writes to the Ephesians: ‘‘ You have been 
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.’’? The 
grammarian may interpret this foundation in four ways: 
the foundation upon which the apostles are built ; the founda- 
tion on which the apostles build; the foundation which the 
apostles have built; and the foundation which is identified 
with the apostles. It is the apostles and prophets themselves 
who are the foundation of the Church. In this building, of 
which Christ is the corner-stone and the faithful the living 
stones, the foundation must be of the same nature and 
symbolize persons. Are the prophets named here those of 
the New Testament or those of the Old? Perhaps those of 
the New, because, since in Greek the same definite article 
includes the two words, it seems to place them in the same 
category, and because the prophets and apostles of the New 
Testament are generally grouped together without any 
possible misunderstanding. Nevertheless, the other hypo- 
thesis seems better. That the prophets of the New Testa- 
ment are the foundations of the Church is not a very natural 
thought, and we find no trace of it elsewhere. The prophetic 
charisma of the New Testament edifies, but does not lay a 


WColai a: **Eph, ii, 14-193 Cf..Col- 4, 20-224 

3 Eph. ii, 20: Superaedtficatt super fundamentum Apostolorum et Pro- 
phetarum. Were these the prophets of the Old Testament or of the New ? 
In favour of the latter are urged : (2) the analogy more apparent than real 
(Eph. iii, 3 ; iv, 11) ; (6) the position of the words, the Apostles being named 
first; but nothing proves that St Paul intends to follow the order of time 
rather than the order of dignity ; (c) the one article (7@v), which seems to show 
that Apostles and prophets are placed in one category ; but this reason is 
not decisive, for the Apostles of Christ and the prophets of the ancient Law 
can very well be considered under the same aspect of pillars of the Church, 


THE CHURCH 283 


foundation. On the contrary, we know how eager Paul is to 
establish the new system on the foundations of the old, and to 
represent the apostles to us as the heirs of the prophets. 

The sanctity of the Church is so often proclaimed that it is 
superfluous to give a list of testimonies thereto. It is enough 
to recollect that Christians, by the fact of their baptism and 
as members of the mystical body, are saints by antonomasia ; 
that the Church is the bride of Christ, whose sanctity is 
bestowed upon it; and that Jesus gave his blood to purify 
and sanctify it that it might be ‘‘ without blemish, holy, and 
spotless.’’ 


II—TuHeE LIFE OF THE CHURCH 


1. The Mystical Christ. 2. The Mystical Body of Christ. 3. The Holy 
Spirit, Soul of the Church. 4. The Spirit and Christ. 5. The Com- 
munion of Saints. 6. Jn Christ Jesus. 


1. In connection with the Epistle to the Ephesians we have 
studied the collective entity formed by the union of Christ 
and the Church, its analogy with the human body, its 
principal properties, and its relations with the mystery of 
redemption.! We must now follow this doctrine still further, 
deduce its consequences, and examine their import. 

The Church is ‘‘ the complement of Christ’? as the trunk 
is the complement of the head and as the limbs are the 
complement of the organism. The head is helpless without 
the body; the organism can function normally only if it 
possesses every one of its organs. So Christ without the 
Church would be an incomplete being; incomplete as a 
Redeemer, since the grace which he possesses for the purpose 
of bestowing it would remain inactive; incomplete also as 


1 Vol. I, pp. 300-307. Especially on the mystery, Vol. II, pp. 4-11. 

2 Eph. i, 23: rts €orl 7d copa adrod, 76 rAnpwpa Tob Ta mdvTa ev maou TAy- 
poupevov. Wetranslate: “‘[The Church] which is his body, the complement 
of him who is completed inallin every way.’ The other possible translation, 
‘“him who perfects everything, who brings everything to its perfection,”’ 
would also be in the spirit of Paul ; but the former commends itself for many 
reasons. First, the ancient versions in general authorize it. Moreover, 
the participle mAjpovpevos appears never to have a transitive meaning, but 
always a passive or reflexive one. Finally, since the last part of the phrase 
explains in what way the Church is the complement of Christ, this gives more 
sequence and connection to the discourse. This clearer and more beautiful 
meaning is, moreover, favoured by the Fathers. St Jerome writes: Stcut 
adimpletur tmperator, st quotidie ejus augeatuy exercttus et ficnt novae 
provinctae et populorum multitudo succrescat ; tta et Dominus noster J. C. 
tn eo quod stbt credunt omnta. The thought and expression are taken from 
Origen: évvder Bacirda pev mAnpovpevov Tijs earie Kal’ €xagrov rdv 
avfovrwy tiv Bactreiav, Kevovpevov S€ tavrns ev tois adiotapevots, KTA. 
St Chrysostom says more briefly, referring to the allegory of Paul: Kal yap 
TrAnpwpa Kedadts o@pa, kai mAjpwpa owparos Kepadyj. ‘‘ The body completes 
the head and the head completes the body ; for the body is composed of all 
its parts and has need of each of them.”’ St Thomas and others say the same 
with more or less clearness. 


284 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


second Adam, because he is so only by his representative 
character ; incomplete even as Christ, for Christ is also, in St 
Paul, a collective personality. Thus Christ ‘‘ is completed in 
all in every way’’: in the members of the sacred hierarchy 
as Head of the Church, and in the humble faithful as Saviour 
and Sanctifier. 

On our text Origen makes a very penetrating reflection : 
‘‘ The Church is the body of Christ ; but must we consider it 
as the trunk, distinct from the head and governed by it, or is 
not the entire Church of Christ rather the body of Christ 
animated by his divinity and filled with his Spirit, after the 
analogy of the human body, of which the head is itself a 
part? In the second case, what there is human in him will 
be an element of the body and what there is divine and vivify- 
ing will form, as it were, the divine presence, which animates 
the whole Church.’’! Apart from some expressions which 
require explanation, the question is thus very well stated. St 
Paul indeed looks upon Christ and the Church in two very 
different ways. Sometimes the Church is compared to the 
trunk in contrast to the head, and then the Church and 
Christ are the two integral parts of the mystical body. This 
is the case with all passages in which the person of Christ is 
likened to the head.? 

But it is not always so. Often the Church and Christ 
are synonymous or are distinguished only by a scarcely 
perceptible shade of meaning; Christ and the Church are 
one complete whole; the Church is in Christ and Christ is in 
the Church; and for either of them may be substituted ‘‘ the 
body of Christ ’’ without any appreciable change of significa- 
tion. This phenomenon takes place in three series of texts : 
first, when Christ is presented as a collective personality, as 
the true lineage of Abraham and ‘‘ his [spiritual] seed, which 
is Christ,’’? as the total sum of the members, the whole of 
whom constitute the body “‘ of Christ.’’** Here we may apply 
the comment of St Augustine, who of all the Fathers has - 
most frequently and most fittingly spoken of the mystical 
body: Totus Christus caput et corpus est.—Then in the 
expressions: to put on Christ, to be baptized into Christ, to 
be grafted on to Christ: “ For all of you who have been 
baptized in Christ (eis Xpuorov) have put on Christ....’’? “‘If 
thou wert, contrary to Nature, grafted into the wild olive- 
tree, how much more shall they [that are the natural 
branches] be grafted into their own olive- tree?” °—Finally, 
in the characteristic formula In Christo, in Christo Jesu." 


1 In Gregg, Journal of Theol. Studtes, iii, 1902, p. 399. 

2° Eph. i, 22 20iV, 15 ¢-Vy_235 Gol. i, 19 s(e7. Cols 110. eke (ate 
Vol. 1, p.,302.- 

Sra lado: Sie Ors Mit, 1 2: *" Gal; il2 7. 

§ Rom. xl, 24. 7 See Vol. I, p. 300, and below, pp. 297 ff. 


THE CHURCH 285 


2. The comparison of political societies with the organism 
of the human body is as old as the world, as is proved by the 
apologue, ‘‘ signal among fables,’’ related by Titus Livius, 
and put into verse by La Fontaine. To the plebeians who 
complained that the Senate decreed to itself all honours and 
arrogated to itself all privileges, Menenius Agrippa pointed 
out that the stomach, that voracious and idle organ, for 
which all the other members laboured arduously, is not the 
least necessary for the public good. St Paul employs the 
same comparison to make his readers understand that 
the diversity of spiritual gifts, far from being injurious to 
the union of the faithful, tends, on the contrary, to bind it 
closer. 


For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have 
not the same office ; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and each 
one members one of another.’ 


Other societies can indeed assume metaphorically the name 
of body, because the tendency to the same end, the bonds of 
authority and dependence, and mutual rights and duties give 
them a moral unity which assimilates them to a living 
organism. But the union of the mystical body of Christ is 
of a higher nature. If it is called mystical, it is not in order 
to deny its real properties, but rather to distinguish it from 
the physical body, assumed by the Word in the body of 
Mary, in order to mark its relation to what Paul calls the 
Mystery, and, above-all, in order to express certain mysteri- 
ous properties of the supernatural order which, because they 
cannot be verified by the experience of the senses, are none 
the less realities. There are in this marvellous composite 
first a real action of the head on each and all the members, 
then a reaction of the members upon one another through 
the communion of the saints, and lastly, a real interpenetra- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, who vivifies the entire body and 
forms in it the most perfect of bonds—charity. What dis- 
tinguishes the mystical body essentially from the moral 
entities, incorrectly named ‘‘ bodies,’’ is that it is endowed 
with life and that its life comes from within. 

The text which has just been read merely outlines the 
doctrine. In it Paul proposes only to admonish each of the 
faithful to be content with his allowance of graces through 
the consideration that the spiritual blessings of the Church, 
to whichever member they individually belong, are, so to 
speak, common to all. He gives, however, to his union of 


1 Rom.°xii, 4, 5. It is to justify the lesson of modesty which St Paul has 
just given : sapere ad sobrietatem, et untcusque sicut Deus divistt mensuram 
fidei. The and (ef) is superfluous and is wanting in the Greek. In verse 5, 
of oANol==all, as many as we are; 1d Kad’ «ls (a late Greek expression) 
= each one separately. 


286 THE THEOLOGY OLEST PAUSE 


solidarity a fuller and more complete expression in his first 
Epistle to the Corinthians : 


For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members 
of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body ; so also is Christ. 
For in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or 
Gentiles, whether bond or free ; and in one Spirit we have all been made 
to drink. 

For the body also is not one member, but many. If the foot should 
say : Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not 
of the body? And if the ear should say: Because I am not the eye, 
I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body ? If the whole body 
were the eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, 
where would be the smelling? But now God hath set the members, 
every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. If they were 
all one member, where would be the body ? But now there are many 
members indeed, yet one body. 

The eye cannot say to the*hand: I need not thy help; nor again 
the head to the feet: I have no need of you. Yea, much more 
those that seem to be the more feeble members of the body are more 
necessary ; and such as we think to be the less honourable members 
of the body, about thse we put more abundant honour ; and those that 
are our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness ; for our comely 
parts have no need. 

Thus God hath tempered the body together, giving to that which wanted 
the more abundant honour ; that there might be no schism in the body, 
but that the members might be mutually careful one for another. And 
if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or if one member 
be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. 

Now you are [all together] the body of Christ and each one of you 
individually its members. 


The diversity of organs in a human body is not only an ele- 
ment of beauty, but an essential condition of life. Among the 
members of the mystical body it does not arise from the fact 
that they are Christians, since in this respect there is no 
difference between them; nor from their being men, for the 
differences which nature establishes do not count from the 
Christian point of view; Paul ascribes it to those gratuitous 
gifts which the Holy Spirit grants to the faithful for the 
common good of the Church: the apostolate, prophecy, dis- 


* 1 Cor. xii, 12-27. This passage offers no remarkable difficulties of 
exegesis. For verse 12, see above, p. 263. 

(2) The comparison to the human body must be explained as a parable 
rather than as an allegory. It is therefore not necessary to ask what the 
different organs signify : the ears, the eyes, the feet, the hands, the head, etc. 
The scholastics, following St. Gregory, see in the members used for locomo- 
tion the figure of active life, and in the organs of sense the image of the 
contemplative life. The less noble members are imperfect Christians ; the 
dishonourable parts denote figuratively sinners, etc. But that is an accom- 
modative interpretation which easily excites ridicule. 

(2) In verse 27 the Vulgate Vos estis corpus Christi et membra DE MEMBRO 
requires the reading kal péAn ex péAovs. But the critics rightly prefer xai 
péAn €x pépous, which means: “‘ and its members 7” particular” (¢.e., each 
one in particular). If we read é« péAous, it will mean: ‘‘ members depending 
on other members and intended to help them.” A very just idea in itself 
and clearly expressed in Rom. xii, 5, as wé have just seen. 


THE CHURCH 287 


courses marked by wisdom or learning, discernment of 
spirits, power to heal the sick and to work miracles, aptitude 
for governing, teaching, helping the poor, consoling the 
afflicted, and performing other works of mercy. These 
examples are well chosen, since the charismata are definitely 
social peculiarities and have for their author the Holy Spirit 
himself, who fashions as he likes the mystical body, of which 
he is the soul; but all that the Apostle says could also be 
applied to the ordinary hierarchy, and perhaps even to the 
inequality, which the difference in their co-operation in the 
various calls of grace produces among the saints. 

Man is essentially a social being. A pagan philosopher 
says: ‘‘ We were made for common action. . . . To oppose 
ong another is contrary to nature.’’! If each of the organs 
could instinctively attract everything to itself, the entire body 
would soon perish. It would be the same with the social 
body ; but nature warns us against selfishness. It makes us 
understand that we are not sufficient for ourselves, that each 
member has its sphere of usefulness, that the weakest are 
often the most necessary, that the least honourable are those 
who are usually treated with the most honour, that the 
general health depends upon the proper working of the 
whole, and that the welfare of all is dependent on the good 
condition of each one. This truth is proved especially by its 
very obviousness, and we should not insist upon it, if St 
Paul did not furnish us with the true formula of Christian 
altruism: ‘‘ We are members of one another.’’? The other 
members are not strangers to us; they are a part of us; they 
work for us as we work for them; we need their aid and we 
owe them ours. 

The social function, which sums up the activity of the 
organic body, is community of life. The member does not 
live from its own life, but from the life of the body. For this 
‘t must be united not only to the head, from which the living 
influx proceeds, but also to the other members, each of which, 
in its own sphere, transmits that life to it. Separated from 
the head, the member no longer lives; isolated from the 
other members, it would lead only an imperfect and pre- 
carious life. St Paul teaches us this when he describes that 
visionary of Colosse, ‘‘ who holds not the head, from which 
the whole body, being supplied with nourishment and com- 


1 Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts, ii, 1 (eyévapev mpds ovvepylav) ; vil, 13. 
Cf. Cicero, De offic., iii, 5 5 Xenophon, Memorab., ii, 13. 

2 Rom. xii, § : singuls autem alter altertus membra. Read the fine com- 
mentary of St Augustine (Im Psalm. cxxx, No. 6, Migne, XX XVII, 1707): 
Auris videt in oculo, oculus audttinaure.... Ita cum auris dicit : Oculus 
mihi videt, oculus asctt: Aurts mths audtt, oculs et aures dicunt: Manus 
nobts operantur, etc. Ifa thorn enters the foot, the eyes and the hands are 
used to extract it ; and all the body bends over and exerts itself to share in 
the operation. 


288 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


pacted by its joints and bands, groweth with the increase of 
God ’’; for it is through Christ ‘‘ the Head that the whole 
body, being compacted and fitly joined together by the 
mutual help of the members each working’ in its own 
measure, maketh increase and is edified in charity.’’! 

The mystical body of St Paul has often been compared to 
the allegorical vine of St John.?. The similarities of thought 
are evident. In both cases the supernatural life is likened to 
the growth of a living being, a growth due to an internal 
Principle and having union with the centre of life as its 
essential condition. But the differences are not less striking. 
In St John the branches, joined directly to the stock, get the 
sap directly from it; while in St Paul the members, united 
to the head by the other members, receive the flow of life 
through their means. The first considers rather the in- 
dividual life of the believers, while St Paul has especially in 
view the social life of the Church, which regulates and 
measures the growth of each Christian. But for both the 
agent of the supernatural life is the Holy Spirit. 


3- The Holy Spirit is the soul of the mystical body. As 
the soul by its presence ennobles the human body, vivifies it 
by its contact and moves it by its activity, so dces the Holy 
Spirit animate the mystical body of Christ. He is the divine 
guest of the Church and of each one of its members; he is 
the only agent and motive power in the supernatural order; 
he is the joint gift of the Father and the Son, and gives him- 
self also as the most precious of his gifts. 

The Holy Spirit dwells in us as in his temple. This temple 
is sometimes the entire Church, sometimes a Christian com- 
munity, and sometimes the individual soul: ‘‘ The Spirit of 
God dwelleth in you.”"*—‘t Your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost which is in you.’’4—‘* If the Spirit of him that 
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up 
Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies 
because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”® The Holy Spirit 
being the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son, where 
he dwells the Father and Son dwell also: ‘‘ Know you not 
that you are the temple of God?’’®—‘‘ The temple of God is 
holy, which you are.’’7—‘* We are the temple of the living 


* Col. ii, 18 ; Eph. iv, 12-16. Texts explained in Vol. I, pp. 304-8. 

* John xv, 1-6. The allegory of the olive tree (Rom. xi, 16-24) can also 
be compared. See above, p. 273. 

> 1 Cor. iii, 16 (76 ITveipa tod @eod ev tuiv olxet); Rom. viii, 9 (elmep 
psy Geod otxet ev duiv); 2 Tim. i, 14 (8a IIvevparos aylov rot évoixotvros 
ev up ). 


4 cia ¢« 


I Cor. vi, 19: 76 c@pa tudv vads 706 ev Suiv dylov Ivevparéds eorw. 
* Rom. viii, 11. See p. 145. 
* 1 Cor. ili, 16 : od« otSate drt vads Beod dare ; 
7 171 one ‘ a mie. ge) ¢ > € a 
I Cor. iii, 17 : 6 vads Too Ocod aytos eoTiv oiriwds €ore tyueis. 


THE CHURCH 289 


God.’’!—‘‘ You are built into a temple of God in the Spirit.’’? 
—‘‘ That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts.’’® 

As the guest of our soul, the Spirit of holiness is not in- 
active there. All the florescence of our spiritual life expands 
at a breath from him. Therefore he is called by St Paul the 
‘‘ Spirit of Life,’’4 and by St John a ‘‘ quickening Spirit.’”° 
All the charismata, of whatever nature, are conferred by 
him.® It is to him that the Apostle owes the revelation of 
the great mystery, which is the fundamental article of his 
Gospel ; for the Spirit who searcheth the deep things of God, 
reveals them to whom he will.’ His action extends to all 
Christians and to all manifestations of the supernatural life, 
from baptismal regeneration to everlasting blessedness. To 
obey the motions of grace is commonly called ‘* walking in 
the Spirit, being moved by the Spirit ’’ ;° the aggregate of 
all virtues is ‘‘ the fruit of the Spirit ’’ ;° all that lifts us above 
our carnal and psychical nature, all that forces us into a 
divine atmosphere, and all that transforms us into spiritual 
beings, according to Paul’s favourite expression, receives the 
general name of spirit,‘° alluding to the source from which it 
emanates. 

The Holy Spirit is love, and the characteristic of love is to 
give, giving oneself with one’s gifts. The love with which 
God loves us is manifested by the gift of the Spirit, and at 
the same time by an outpouring of sanctifying grace, which 
is an effect of the Spirit present in us. This outpouring of 
grace is not transitory; it is inherent, and it continues in- 
separably united with the Holy Spirit, who is its source: 
‘The love of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy 
Ghost who is given to us.’’1!_ There is, therefore, in us some- 
thing else besides the Spirit, there is the product of his 
activity. As this outpouring is necessarily finite, since it is 
received in a finite being, it is susceptible of indefinite 
increase. Hence Paul says sometimes that we have received 
‘the firstfruits,’!? or ‘‘the earnest of the Spirit.”’"** We 
have indeed received the Spirit wholly, for the Spirit is 
indivisible ; but we have received only a portion of the bless- 
ings which he intends for us, and that the smallest, or rather, 
the least apparent portion of them. 

The question has been raised whether, in order to do justice 
to all these affirmations of the Apostle and to the interpreta- 
tions of the Fathers, it would not be necessary to accord to 

1 2 Cor. vi, 16: jets yap vads Qeod eopev Cdvros. 


ee a / ~ fey J tA 
2 Eph. ii, 22. ovvorxodopeiade els KaTouxnTypiov Tod Beod ev [Ivevpart. 


3 Eph. iii, 17: KaToucfoat Tov Xprorév 81a Tis mlorews év rais Kapdiats budv. 
é Rom. viii, 2. 5 John vi, 63. Sir Corixtas 
at Cor. ii, 10; ® Rom. viii, 4, 14, etc. ® Gal. v, 22. 

10 See pp. 406-7. 4 Rom. v, 5. See Note S, p. 432. 


- 


eee ~ ” 
* viii, 23: adrol THY dmap jy Tod mvevparos EXOVTES. 
18 2 Cor. i, 22; V, 5 (6 Sovs nyty Tov dppaBava rob mvedparos). Cf. Eph.1, 14. 
Il. 19 


290 THE, THEOLOGYS ORV SE PAU 


the Holy Spirit a special kind of presence. Is the union of 
the just soul with God made directly with the divine nature, 
or by the mediation of the Holy Spirit? In the first case, it 
would pertain to all the three Persons by the same right, and 
could be referred to one of them only by appropriation; in 
the second case, it would be peculiar to the Holy Spirit, and 
the other two Persons would participate in it only by con- 
comitance, by virtue of that mutual interpenetration which 
does not permit them to exist separately. We know that the 
theologian Petavius imagined for the indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit in us something analogous to the union of the Word 
incarnate with human nature. He makes here, however, a 
difference; in the hypostatic union of the Word, a sub- 
stantial and indissoluble bond unites the two extremes ; while 
in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the bond is only 
accidental—because it takes place with a faculty of the soul, 
not with its substance, and because it can be broken—but it 
would nevertheless be personal to the Spirit of holiness. This 
attractive theory is very difficult to conceive. Its inventor 
does not himself succeed in explaining it. ‘‘ It is not yet,’’ 
he says, ‘‘ sufficiently elucidated.’’! In fact, on what would 
be founded the special relation of consecration or possession 
which would unite the just soul to the Holy Spirit? What 


* The opinion of Petavius is not to be confounded with the theory of Peter 
Lombard. The latter taught not only that the Holy Spirit is present in a 
special way in the just soul, but that he takes there the place of the virtue of 
charity, the act of which he produces in us. Some of his disciples said even 
that the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as he dwells in us, is called grace, and that 
since he unites himself to our will, he is the charity by which we love God. 
Petavius admitted a grace and love which are created and consequently dis- 
tinct from the Holy Spirit; he only said, with some reservations: Certa 
quaedam ratio est, qua se Spiritus sanctt persona sanctorum justorumque 
mentibus applicat, quae ceterts personts eodem modo non competit (De Trinit., 
VIII, vi, 6). The Holy Spirit is veluti forma gua sancti Deoque grati et 
adoptvur filtt sunt (1bid., No. 3) . . . quasi forma sanctificans et adoptivum 
reddens sut communicatione filium (tbid., No.8). This presence is peculiar to 
the Holy Spirit, although it is difficult to say how (zé¢d., No.6). It is secundum 
hypostasim, on secundum essentiam (tbid., No. 6), otherwise it would be 
common to the three Persons ; however, it is not hypostatic (ibid., No. 2)— 
that is to say, it takes place with the person itself of the Holy Spirit, but there 
does not result from it a person, a hypostasis, as in the union of the Word with 
humanity.—The great difficulty is that tradition does not know and the two 
cannot conceive of any other union peculiar to a divine person than the hypa- 
static union ; it is not clear indeed what a divine Person can give of his own 
(en propre) to a finite nature, if it is not his personality, since he has nothing 
else of his own. Petavius knew no more than we do about this, or, if he did 
know more, he kept it to himself: Mostra quae privatim sit opinio, vel non 
dtco, quia rem nondum compertam satis habeo ; vel hoc loco non dico (tb7d., 
No.6). Consequently, Petavius thinks that the Holy Spirit was present in 
the just souls of the Old Testament only by his operation (xar’ évépyetay), 
while he does dwell substantially (odJctw8ds) in those of the New (De 7rinit., 
VIII, vii, 1 and 5). But this is another serious disadvantage of his system.— 
Cf. B. Froget, O.P., De I’habitation du Saint Esprit dans les ames justes 
d’apres la doctrine de St Thomas*, Paris, 1900, pp. 447-475. 


THE CHURCH 291 


hypostatic (or partly hypostatic) function can the Holy 
Spirit exercise in the soul? And if he unites himself to it by 
an operation like the production of sanctifying grace, why 
should his union be direct, when the other two Persons, who 
have shared in his activity, are united only through an 
intermediary ? 

On the other hand, the common explanation, which sees in 
the indwelling of the divine Persons only different degrees of 
appropriation, does not seem to harmonize sufficiently with 
the language of the Fathers and the Scriptures. We are 
told that it is by sanctifying grace that God dwells in us, as 
in his temple; but ordinary grace, a product of the entire 
Trinity, unites us directly to God without distinction of 
Persons. There is not, therefore, in regard to the way in 
which the three divine Persons are present, any other distinc- 
tion possible than that of appropriation, by virtue of which 
we are accustomed to ascribe to the Father being and power, 
to the Son knowledge and wisdom, and to the Holy Ghost 
love and sanctity, because we perceive in these different 
attributes a certain relation to their personal characteristics. 
This theory is worthy of respect, but it is nevertheless only 
a theory. 

In any case, the Fathers and the sacred writers do not 
seem to look at things in this way. In their opinion the God- 
assimilating union is accomplished, first, with the Persons 
and then by the Persons with human nature; and sanctifying 
grace is not the condition, but the result of the presence of 
the divine guests. When God wishes to sanctify souls, he 
sends his beloved Son, the universal mediator of grace; and 
the Son in his turn, conjointly with his Father, sends the 
Spirit of sanctity. The sanctifying action, therefore, takes 
place in accordance with the order of the eternal processions 
(of the Trinity), and it is the same with the presence of the 
three Persons in the sanctified soul. Only in this last case 
the order is reversed; the Holy Spirit, having been given and 
giving himself to the soul, first of all enters into contact with 
it. It is, of course, a priority of thought, not of time, but a 
priority founded upon something real, for the sending of the 
Persons is not equivalent to the appropriation of their 
attributes. Some texts, like the following, do not appear 
susceptible of any other exegesis: Caritas Det diffusa est in 
cordibus nostris per Spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis. 
Here a vast field opens before us, but we cannot enter it 
without passing beyond the limits of biblical theology. 


4. All that we have just said shows how intimate is the 
union of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the work of sancti- 
fication. The observation is certainly not a new one; St 
Epiphanius says: ‘‘ Christ is sent by the Father and the 


292 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Holy Spirit is also sent ; Christ speaks in the saints, the Holy 
Spirit speaks also; Christ heals and the Holy Spirit likewise 
heals ; Christ sanctifies and so does the Holy Spirit.’’! Then 
follows a very long series of texts, in which this common 
action is affirmed. In fact, grace, the charismata, filial 
adoption, good works, salvation, eternal glory; in a word, 
all the manifestations of the divine life are referred some- 
times to Christ, sometimes to the Spirit. Thus ‘‘ we live by 
the Spirit’’ and nevertheless ‘‘ Christ is our life.’’? The 
Holy Spirit is the dispenser of all the charismata, and yet 
these are conferred ‘‘ according to the measure of the gift of 
Christ.’’? It is by Jesus Christ that we received the adoption 
of sons; nevertheless, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption 
and ‘‘ all those who are moved by the Spirit of God are sons 
of God.’’* The dead will rise from the dead ‘‘ by a man,’’ 
Jesus Christ; and yet God will raise us ‘‘ because of the 
Spirit’ or “‘ by the Spirit that dwelleth ’’ in us.5 Let us add 
still another fact often pointed out: the equivalence of the 
two formulas in Christ and in the Spirit. This equivalence 
does not go so far as is usually supposed, far from it; but it 
is nevertheless suggestive. Some examples will show this: 


Justified in the Spirit = justified in the Lord.® 
Sanctified in the Holy Spirit = sanctified in Christ Jesus.’ 
Holy temple in the Spirit = holy temple in the Lord.® 


To be sealed in the Spirit = to be sealed in Christ.® 
Joy in the Holy Spirit = joy in the Lord.?° 
Peace in the Holy Spirit = peace in the Lord.” 


To explain this phenomenon, must we say that Christ and 
the Spirit are identical in Paul’s thought, or that the Spirit is 
only the mode of Christ’s operation, or that Christ, after his 
resurrection, totally transformed himself into the Spirit? 
There is a simpler and more natural explanation, which has, 
moreover, the advantage of avoiding absurdity. Let us 
remark first that the equivalence in question is a very limited 
one. The pre-existent Christ is never identified with the 
Spirit ; the historical Christ is never identified with the Spirit; 
and Christ as Saviour is never identified with the Spirit in the 
work of redemption. The points of contact between Christ 
and the Spirit concern only the glorified Christ, and even this 
is not in his physical, personal life at the right hand of the 
Father, but in his mystical life in the bosom of the Church. 
In other terms, the Holy Spirit and the glorified Christ, who 


* Ancoratus, 68 (XLITI, 140). * Gal. v, 25 and Col iii, 4; Phil. i, 21. 
§ 1 Cor. xii, 11 and Eph. iv, 9. 

« Eph. i, 5 (cf. Gal. iv, 5-6) and Rom. viii, 15. 

® 1 Cor. xv, 21 and Rom. viii, 11. 

® 1 Cor. vi, 11 and Gal. ii, 17. ? 1 Cor. vi, 11 and i, 2. 

§ Eph. ii, 22 and ii, 21. * Eph. i, 13 and iv, 39. 

10 


Rom. xiv, 17 and Phil. iv, 4. * Rom. xiv, 17 and vy, I. 


THE CHURCH 293 


appear everywhere else as two distinct Persons, seem to 
become identical in their role of sanctifiers of souls.' There, 
indeed, their sphere of influence is the same and their fields 
of action blend; for Christ is the head or, under a somewhat 
different figure, the organism of the mystical body, the soul 
of which is the Holy Ghost; now in ordinary language, 
chiefly in that of St Paul, almost all vital phenomena can be 
referred equally to the soul or to the head. 

But for the identity of operation on the part of Christ and 
the Spirit in the lives of the just there exists a much deeper 
cause. Christ, as man, possessed the fulness of the Spirit? 
and was to cause it to be poured out upon us as soon as he 
had accomplished his redemptive work. Then, at the moment 
of the resurrection, he becomes actually for himself and for 
us a ‘‘ quickening spirit ’’ ;* for himself, since the grace with 
which he abounds fills his body and renders it spiritual, and 
for us, because he communicates to us lavishly all the gifts 
of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit himself. Henceforth, 
from the supernatural point of view, we live by the Son and 
also by the Spirit ; or, more exactly, we live by the Spirit sent 
by the Son. It is an identity of operations without confusion 
of Persons. Let us take, for example, filial adoption. It 
comes to us from the Son who has adopted us and causes us 
to be accepted as brothers; God ‘“‘ predestines us for it by 
Jesus Christ ’’ and confers it upon us by faith and baptism— 
that is to say, by the act and rite which put us “‘ into fellow- 
ship with the Son of God.’’* The Holy Spirit is none the less 
called the ‘‘ Spirit of adoption ’’ and all those whom he leads 
are truly ‘‘ sons of God.’’* This is because God adopts us 
as sons by giving us his Spirit, and Christ adopts us as 
brothers by sending us his Spirit; ‘‘ for if any man hath not 
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.’”’° The proof that 
‘you are sons, is that God hath sent the Spirit of his Son 
into your hearts, where he cries: Abba, Father! Therefore 
now he is not a slave but a son; and if a son, an heir also 
through God.’?? The Holy Spirit is the witness, the 
messenger, the agent, and the pledge of our sonship. $ 

Thus, far from being a source of obscurity, the active 
interpenetration of the Son and Holy Spirit is for us a source 
of intense light. Thanks to it, we better understand why 
Christ had to rise from the dead in order to send us his Spirit 
and to become himself a quickening Spirit. It also throws 
light upon the nature of the mystical body, which is not a 
fiction, a simple metaphor or a pure moral entity, but a 

a Oo) Bs Bb *-1 Cor. xv, 45. Cf. pp. 172-3. 

* Gal. iv, 5 (the Son becomes incarnate in order to confer upon us 
the adoption of sons); Eph. i, 5 (mpoopicas tjuads eis vioBeciav dua Jb Gy 
Gal. iii, 26 (mavres viol Geos éore Sia. Tijs micTEws, év Xptot@ *Inood). 

aez (or. 1; 9. : 5 Rom. viii, 14-15. 

* Rom. viii, 9. 7 Gal. iv, 6-7. 


294 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


composite of the supernatural order, receiving at the same 
time the vital influx from the head, the centre of the organism 
and from the soul, the principle of life. Thenceforth the con- 
soling doctrine of the communion of saints is no longer a 
theory artificially connected with the theology of the Apostle, 
but a corollary of his teaching, clear and easy to understand. 


5. The communion of saints is the bond of corporate life 
which unites the members of Christ with their Head and with, 
one another under the common action of one and the same 
Spirit. This definition has the double advantage of agreeing 
with Pauline terminology and of being sufficiently elastic to 
adapt itself to all later precise interpretations, without preju- 
dice to the meaning of the article subsequently inserted in the 
Creed.? ; 

The Apostle calls ‘‘ saints’’ all those who are in com- 
munion with Jesus Christ, or, preferably, all those ‘‘ who are 
in Christ.’? Whether they are still contending in the arena 
or whether they have already received their crown, makes no 
difference in his eyes; for the charity that ‘‘ never faileth”’ 
unites them all alike to Christ Jesus; living or dead, they are 
always ‘‘ with him, in him’’; and they form part of his 
kingdom and of his mystical body. It is remarkable that 
Paul constantly uses this word ‘‘ saints’’ as a _ simple 
synonym for Christians and applies it without distinction to 
all the faithful, even in cases where grave abuses have to be 
reformed. Is it because he supposes them all to be in- 
dividually worthy of this title, leaving to him who searcheth 
the reins and the hearts of men the task of classifying them? 
Or does he take this name in the theocratic and social sense 
which it had under the Old Covenant, and does it constitute 
a sufficient right to it to belong to the Church, the sanctity 
of which is imparted to each of the members? What favours 
the second hypothesis is that Paul recognizes only two ways 
of leaving the mystical body : one on account of unbelief, the 
other by excommunication. By unbelief the baptized member 
separates himself from the Head whence all the flow of life 
is derived ; by excommunication he is cut off officially. Who- 


1 For the origin and meaning of and motive for the insertion in the Creed 
of the words sanctorum communionem, cf. Revue a’histotre et de littér. rélt- 
gleuses, vol. ix, 1904, pp. 222-252 (Dom Morin) and Diction. de théol. cathol., 
vol. iii, 1906, col. 350-354 (P. Bernard). The addition was made about the 
beginning of the fifth century or the end of the preceding one and very 
probably in Gaul. The word sanctorum is not neuter (of sacred things), as 
Zahn has claimed, but masculine. The saints denote certainly, besides the 
faithful, or the saints on earth, the elect of heaven. We may merely ask if 
the introducer of the formula did not intend to designate especially the 
blessed souls in heaven ; the communion of terrestrial saints with one another 
was a matter of course and could not be doubted by anyone, while the 
communion between the saints of earth and the saints of heaven had just 
been vigorously disputed in southern Gaul. 


THE CHURCH 295 


ever, having once entered into the unity of the mystical body, 
either has not wholly detached himself from it, or has not 
been formally expelled from it, belongs, therefore, to the 
sphere in which the communion of saints is in operation. 

A certain community of joys and sorrows is essential to all 
society. All the members of a moral body lend one another 
mutual aid. The humblest have need of the noblest, and the 
noblest have need of the humblest. The welfare or unhappi- 
ness of some is shared to some degree by all. The honour or 
dishonour of some is reflected morally upon all. And this is 
even truer of the Christian society, whose more intimate 
union is symbolized by the human body. Each Christian 
works for the development of the body of Christ. The very 
person of Jesus Christ possesses a fulness to which nothing 
can possibly be added; but the mystical Christ is susceptible 
of indefinite growth which he receives from the individual 
growth of his members. Thus the Church rises by degrees 
‘into a holy temple in the Lord,’’ and the body of Christ 
acquires little by little its full stature and becomes “‘ a com- 
plete man,’’ thanks to the continual progress of its organism. 
No part gains anything which is not profitable to the whole ; 
but, inversely, the whole gains nothing which is not of profit 
to the parts. In this way there is produced a kind of vital 
circulation, bringing to the centre all the product of the life- 
giving energy to distribute it in all directions, as the ocean 
absorbs into itself the rivers whose origin it feeds. But there 
is this difference to the advantage of the mystical body, that 
it retains all that it has received and gives it back without 
losing anything. 

The communion of saints has for its aim to enrich the 
treasure of the Church and to distribute this subsequently to 
this or that member. The first result is obtained by every 
meritorious act; the second chiefly by prayer. ‘* Now,’’ says 
the Apostle, ‘‘I rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up 
those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in 
my flesh for his body, which is the Church.* According to 
his dogmatic prejudices, every reader is tempted to see in 
this text too much or too little; but there are at least three 

1 Col. i, 24: Nov yxaipw ev rots mabjpaow rep vpar, Kat avravarAnpa 
7a, vaTephuata TOV Orixpewy Tod Xpiorod ev rij aapki ov vrép TOO datos avToo 
5 éorw 1 éxxAnoia.—The substantive torépnyua, ‘ that which is wanting,’ 
opposed to zepiccevya, “ that which abounds”’ (2 Cor. viii, 13-14), expresses 
the need of being completed (dvanAnpodv, 1 Cor. xvi, 17 ; Pei 230; 
or mpocavanAnpodv, 2 Cor. ix, 12; xi, 9; OF xaraprilew, 1 Thess. iii, 10). 
The word is found in St Paul only in these eight texts, and the meaning of it 
cannot be doubtful.—The meaning of the verb avravamAnpodiv, which is met 
nowhere else in the Bible and is very rare in profane writers, is also 
perfectly certain ; it is “‘ to complete what is incomplete.” As St Paul usually 
puts with dorepnya the verbs avamAnpody or mpooavamAnpooy, it may be asked 
what is the exact meaning of the component particle avd. Does it merely 
strengthen the idea ? 


296 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


facts certain: First, the tribulations of Christ are not suffer- 
ings comparable to those of Jesus, but rather the pains and 
torments endured by Christ during his mortal life. These 
tribulations, in spite of their infinite value, present from one 
point of view a sort of deficit; the word employed by the 
Apostle (vorépyua) can have no other meaning.—It is man’s 
duty to fill up this deficit and thus to complete the work of 
Christ, and this is what Paul is proud and happy to do by 
completing (avravarAnpo) what is wanting in the tribulations 
of his Master. 

Here the exegete can advance only with hesitation. What 
are the tribulations of Christ which are to be made up for the 
good of the Church? Are they the sufferings of Gethsemani 
and Calvary, in themselves more than sufficient for the salva- 
tion of mankind, but the application of which to individual 
souls remains to be assured? Or are they the persecutions 
endured in order to found the kingdom of God, persecutions 
of which all the apostles and, after them, all the preachers 
of the Gospel are to have their share? In the first hypothesis 
the dogma of the communion of saints is directly taught. In 
the second we learn at least that Jesus Christ established the 
salvation of the human race upon the principle of solidarity, 
and that those who carry on his work are to share in it in 
order to realize his merciful designs. 

When we speak of solidarity, we mean a reversibility of 
merits and demerits. This idea was current among Paul’s 
contemporaries. Without stopping to justify it, the Apostle 
takes it for granted when he affirms that the Church of 
Corinth expiates by sicknesses and bereavements the 
irreverence shown by some in the celebration of the Lord’s 
Supper ; that the Christian husband sanctifies the unbelieving 
wife and that the believing wife sanctifies the pagan husband, 
and that charity makes up in some way for inequality among 
the disciples, the rich giving to the poor the superfluity of 
their temporal goods and the poor recompensing them in 
higher goods.* He has such confidence in this exchange of 
spiritual graces that he does not cease to implore the prayers 
of those to whom he writes, offering them in return the aid of 
his own prayers and exhorting them to pray for one another : 
‘“ By all prayer and supplication, praying at all times in the 
Spirit . . . and with supplication for all the saints and for 
me that speech may be given me that I may open my mouth 
with confidence, to make known the mystery of the Gospel.’’? 
He attributes to these prayers his deliverance, the protection 
with which God surrounds him and the success of his preach- 
ing ; for, when supplication reaches such a degree of intensity 

* 1 Cor. xi, 30-32 ; vii, 14 ; 2 Cor. viii, 13-15. 
® Eph. vi, 18-19, 


THE CHURCH 207 


that it can be called a struggle, a combat, it is all-powerful 
with God.* 

The prayer of the just is useful not only to the living; 
it is also profitable for the dead. A Christian of Ephesus, 
Onesiphorus, had just died, having lavishly bestowed upon 
Paul the most touching proofs of affection and devotion. in 
order to repay his debt of gratitude, the Apostle is not 
content to recommend to Timothy the family of Onesiphorus, 
but he himself recommends the soul of the deceased to God: 
‘‘ The Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that 
day.’’? Several Protestant commentators record the fact 
rather ungraciously and not without astonishment. But what 
can be more natural, if the Church is one and if it includes 
the dead as well as the living? 


6. Under whatever aspect we consider the life of the 
Church, we inevitably come to the formula In Christo Jesu, 
which is certainly ‘‘ one of the pillars of St Paul’s theology ”’ 
(Sanday). Without being strictly his, since St John makes 
a restricted use of it, it has in Paul a plenitude of mean- 
ings and a variety of applications which are thoroughly 
characteristic. 

In his first Epistle St John several times declares that 
charity establishes between God and us a relation of mutual 
interpenetration. ‘‘ God is charity, and he that abideth in 
charity abideth in God and God in him.’’* Our act of charity, 
finite as it is, not only has God for its immediate object, but 
is really a taking possession of God who is infinite love. 
Charity, so far as it is in us, unites us, therefore, to him by 
an indissoluble bond. And what is true of the Father is true 
also of the Son, since they are of the same substance: Ego 
et Pater unum sumus. So that, in the Epistle, it can be 
sometimes asked whether St John means to speak of the Son 
or of the Father. But, in the Gospel, his language is wholly 
different. Jesus said to his disciples: ‘‘ He that eateth my 
flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him.’’ 
It is not by virtue of the real union of the flesh of Christ with 
ours that Jesus Christ abideth in us, it is as the spiritual 
nourishment of our soul that he dwells in us, even after the 
corruption of the sacramental elements ; and we abide in him 
because this heavenly food has the admirable property of 
transforming us into him, contrary to what occurs with every 
other food. The case is a little different in the allegory of the 
vine: ‘‘ Abide in me and I in you. .. . He that abideth in 
me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit.’’® We abide 
in him by a living faith, as the branch is attached to the 


1 Rom. xv, 30. ig Pa reba fag Geis > 1 John iv, 16. 
* John vi, 56. 5 John xv, 4-5. 


208 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


trunk by the fibres and the bark; and he dwells in us by 
charity, which puts us into vital contact with him and by 
which he communicates the divine sap to us. 

On passing from St John to St Paul, we have the im- 
pression that the horizon is no more the same. At the very 
first we remark two capital differences in the use of the 
formula. Unlike St John, St Paul never says in Jesus or in 
Jesus Christ; he always says in Christ or in Christ Jesus: 
a clear proof that he is not considering the individual person 
of Jesus, but rather his office as the Messiah, his quality as 
the second Adam; in a word, his representative character. 
Moreover, while St John establishes the reciprocity between 
Jesus and ourselves, St Paul refrains from doing so or at 
least speaks of Jesus Christ in us only in very rare cases, 
the precise meaning of which remains to be discussed.! 

The formula In Christo Jesu is clearly connected with the 
doctrine of the mystical body. This point is, in fact, not 
contested. Let us see, therefore, how St Paul describes the 
incorporation of the Christian in Christ : 


You are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus ; for as many 
of you as have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ. There is 
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free . . . for you are 
all one in Christ Jesus. 

Know you not that all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus are baptised 
inhisdeath ? For weare buried together with him by baptism into his 
death ; that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted 
together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his 
resurrection. 


As the etymological meaning of to baptize is to plunge into 
the water, it is hardly doubtful that in describing the effects 
of baptism St Paul is thinking of the external rite of im- 
mersion and emersion, the efficacious symbol of death and a 
new life. The effect of baptism is to plunge us into Christ, 
to graft us upon Christ, to incorporate us in Christ, to 
identify us in part with Christ. When it is said that the 
Christian is in Christ, as the bird is in the air or the fish in 
the water, this realistic expression is below the truth; for we 
are not in Christ as in a foreign element, but as in an entirety, 
of which we ourselves form a part. To tell the truth, the best 
commentary on the formula In Christo Jesu is the following 


* Rom. viii, 10 (e 8€ Xptords év tyiv) seems to be the exact counter- 
part of 2 Cor. v, 17 (ef 71s €v Xpior@). By the fact that we are in Christ, 
Christ dwells in us.—Gal. ii, 20 (lj ev €uot Xpiorés, cf. Phil. i, 21) recalls 
the Christ-Life of St John.—2 Cor. xiii, 5 (Am nom cognoscttis vosmetipsos 
quia Christus Jesus in vobis est ?) is very remarkable. It is not a question of 
the presence of Jesus Christ in the church of Corinth, but of his dwelling in 
the hearts of the faithful. Von Soden adopts the reading Xpworés *Inoods, 
which the Vulgate presupposes ; but good authorities have "Inoots Xpuards. 
If the latter reading is the true one, it justifies the expression Jesus in ms. 

* Gal. ili, 26-28 ; Rom. vi, 3-5. 


THE CHURCH 299 


text of St Paul: ‘‘ By a man came death, and by a man shall 
come the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so 
also in Christ all shall be made alive.’’! Adam and Christ 
represent here all mankind, and one can say with St 
Augustine, provided that we understand him rightly: In 
Adam Christus et Christus in Adam.? All men are in Adam 
and all are in Christ, although in a very different way: ‘ All 
die in Adam,’’ said St Cyril of Alexandria, ‘‘ because, on 
account of his transgression, human nature was condemned 
in him; thus all shall be justified in Christ because, thanks to 
his redemptive act, human nature is once more blessed in 
him.”’ 

It is not quite correct to say that ‘‘ The Christ of the 
formula In Christo Jesu is always Christ glorified as rvevpa, 
and not the historical Christ’? (Sanday). It is not precisely 
the glorified Christ, but Christ the Saviour, the new Adam, 
that is indicated by the formula; and he is so from the 
moment when he inaugurates his redemptive mission—that 
is to say, from the moment of his Passion. Thenceforth we 
suffer and die with him and we rise from the dead and reign 
with him; we share his form, his life, and his glory. Thence- 
forth also we are called, justified, elected, and predestined in 
him, and in him also we obtain all the heavenly blessings, 
grace, filial adoption, sanctification, and eternal life. 

Such is the normal value of the formula In Christo Jesu, 
but it is susceptible of receiving a remarkable increase or 
diminution of meaning. When the Apostle wishes to express 
the ineffable union of Christians with one another and with 
Christ in the identity of the mystical body, the formula attains 
its maximum value ; but when he confines himself to indicating 
the principle of Christian solidarity, the signification becomes 
weak and faded ; then to be in Christ is to move in the sphere 
of the Gospel or to live According to the spirit of Christianity. 


Il1J—Tue GovERNMENT OF THE CHURCH 


1. Ecclesiastical Dignitaries. 2. Coercive Power of the Church. 
3. Résumé and Conclusions. 


1. All the churches founded by St Paul were directly depen- 
dent upon him. Upon him in truth rested ‘‘ the care of all 
the churches.’’ It may perhaps be asked whether this cen- 
tralization, by prolonging the period of tentative Church 
methods, did not retard the evolution of the monarchical 
episcopate, but it was necessary at the beginning, in order to 


1 + Cor. xv, 21-22. See Vol. I, pp. 135, 136. pre 

2 In Psalm. ci, Sermo i, No. 4 (XXXVII, 1296). Cf. Sermon. ccxcill, 
No.9. (XXXVIII, 1333). 

3 Fragm.in 1 Cor. xv, 22 (EX XI; gor): 


300 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


weld together the bonds of unity and to obviate the danger 
of schism.} 

We should not, however, conclude from this that Paul’s 
churches were without any hierarchical organization. As 
soon as a church had passed the embryonic stage, it always 
received leaders and directors. St Luke tells us that Paul 
and Barnabas, on returning from their common missionary 
journey in Asia Minor, chose elders (xpeaGurépovs) where- 
ever they went. This selection, attended with prayers and 
fastings, was not a simple appointment of the candidates, but 
a liturgical ceremony inaugurating their new functions; for, 
however far back we go, we find that the consecration of the 
sacred ministers is always performed in the midst of fasts and 
solemn supplications. As the chronicle of the Acts is repre- 
sentative in character, and as St Luke is not accustomed to 
repeat what is a matter of course or what he has already said 
once for all, there is nothing surprising in the fact that this 
allusion is an isolated one, but, on the contrary, it should be 
taken for granted that this was everywhere the practice of 
the missionaries. In this case it happens to be a statement 
concerning the Elders of Ephesus,2 whose nomination is 
nowhere recounted. At Thessalonica, a few months after the 
foundation of that church, we remark the presence of 
labourers, presiding officers, and exhorters, to whom the 
faithful owe love, respect, and gratitude. We do not know 
whether they had voluntarily assumed these tasks with the 
consent of the converts, or whether they had been conferred 
upon them by the Apostle; at all events the fact is recognized 
and sanctioned by him. Paul reminds them of their duties : 
‘“ Rebuke the unquiet, comfort the feeble-minded, support 
the weak, be patient towards all men, see that none render 
evil for evil.’’? These men, whose function it was to labour 
on God’s work, to preside over religious gatherings, to warn 
the brethren, and, if need be, to admonish them, and who, in 
return had a right to esteem, affection, and gratitude, occupy 
an official or quasi-official position. Have they the rank of 
deacons and of elders? Analogy would lead us to think SO, 
although they do not bear those titles. A tradition, already 
old in the time of Origen, regarded Caius, St Paul’s host at 
Corinth, as the first bishop of Thessalonica. 

The church of Corinth is often cited as the type of a demo- 
cratic assembly. It is true, the Apostle leaves it to the free 
choice of the Corinthians to appoint the arbiters charged 
with the settlement of litigation and the delegates who were 
to bring to Jerusalem the sum of money that had been col- 
lected ;* but he none the less keeps that turbulent community 


Cf. Ecclesiastical Dignttartes, vol. i, pp. 341 ff. 
*SActoxx st 7. * 1 Thess. v, 12-14. 
Pr ACOrva,ta) hs XVII 


THE CHURCH 301 


under his immediate supervision, and has himself represented 
there almost constantly by his coadjutors ;! and it is always 
he who regulates, judges, and, in the last appeal, decides. 2 
Side by side with the transitory and charismatic ministry, 
which was so flourishing at Corinth, did there exist a hier- 
archical and permanent ministry? Who presided over the 
agape, and who celebrated the Lord’s Supper? We cannot 
say, for our information is very fragmentary and relates to 
the very first beginnings of church polity, and to the three 
or four years following its foundation. But, though precise 
details are lacking, we think that the church of Corinth was 
organized on the model of the other churches. 

The community at Philippi was hardly ten years old when 
the Apostle sent thither a special greeting to the priests 
(ericxorot) and deacons.* Perhaps these persons had taken 
a prominent part in the collection made for Paul when a 
prisoner ; perhaps also Paul wished to recognize their services 
and reinforce their authority. The collective reference to 
the ericxoro. does not prove absolutely that they formed a 
company of equals; it might have included the president him- 
self, if it be supposed that Epaphroditus, ‘‘ the brother, 
fellow-labourer, and fellow-soidier’’ of Paul* held the first 
place there. However, it is more probable that here, as 
elsewhere, the supreme jurisdiction devolved on the repre- 
sentative of the Apostle. 

At Ephesus and in Crete the situation is clear. Paul’s 
delegates, invested with his authority, are instructed to estab- 
lish priests and deacons, to repress heretics and quarrelsome 
persons, and to punish offenders, not excepting the clergy, 
provided that legal procedure be observed.’ When they have 
to be replaced, they will be so by one person only, so that the 
government of these churches is almost monarchical in form. ° 
At the head is the representative of Paul, who exercises a 
sovereign jurisdiction; below him is the college of priests, 
whose prerogatives are not yet clearly defined. In the lowest 
rank of the clergy are the deacons. No allusion is made to a 
charismatic ministry. The hierarchical organization is de- 
veloping ; it is advancing gradually towards a definite con- 
stitution. 

The Apostle had taken good care not to grant complete 
autonomy to the recently founded churches. His lieutenants 
were constantly at work, visiting and reforming the com- 
munities which depended upon him. He was the only pastor 
of the immense diocese which he had conquered for the faith 

eEASOL1Y, 27.5 11, £3. Vil, 0-14; Vill, O xii, 35. 

* 1 Cor, v, I-13 ; xi, 2-34; xiv, 27-40 ; 2 Cor. xiii, 1-ro, etc. 

oh Ed A ie bas 

* Phil. ii, 25. Cf. iv, 3 (Clement and the other helpers). 

rar iaid, sil, 1-15" 19, 11s vi, 2 = Fits 15 5 il, 10; Y Timv, 10-22, 

* Titus iii, 12 (Artemas or Tychicus) ; 2 Tim. iv, 12 (Tychicus). 


302 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of Christ. Neither in Greece, nor in Macedonia, nor in 
Galatia, nor in Crete, nor at Ephesus was there, during his 
life, any other bishop besides himself and his delegates. 
The old tradition which regarded Caius of Corinth as the first 
bishop of Thessalonica may, indeed, be true, for nothing 
specially suggested Caius for that distant post; but it is not 
said, and it is not at all probable, that Caius was bishop 
during Paul’s lifetime. Nor were Titus and Timothy so, 
either. Titus, left in Crete to organize that church, was to 
rejoin his chief on the arrival of a substitute. The position 
of Timothy at Ephesus was also hardly more stable, and the 
Apostle soon recalled him. In a word, the churches of Paul 
were served by deacons and governed by a council of dig- 
nitaries, called indifferently rpeoBvrepor or émicxoror, under the 
always alert surveillance and the ever active direction of their 
founder or his substitutes. 

In the very earliest years, when a church consisted merely of 
a little nucleus of believers, the charismata might for a time 
make up for the absence or the imperfection of the ordinary 
hierarchy, for several of these graces were gifts of instruc- 
tion or government. Perhaps this state of things lasted for 
a short time at Corinth, which was distinguished for the abun- 
dance of its charismatic gifts. Let us not forget that, with 
the exception of Southern Galatia, no ecclesiastical founda- 
tion of Paul preceded his martyrdom by more than fifteen or 
sixteen years. Almost all the churches were much younger 
at the time when the Apostle was busy with their affairs. 
Even at the epoch of the Pastorals, the church of Ephesus 
was not more than twelve years old, and those of Crete had 
just come into existence. 

The way in which the appointment of the sacred ministers 
was made had to vary according to the necessities of place 
and time. The first seven Hellenist deacons of Jerusalem 
were nominated by the faithful and ordained by the apostles. 
This was perhaps an act of condescension suggested to the 
Twelve by the desire to take from the discontented every 
pretext for insubordination and every motive for complaint. 
But Paul and Barnabas, without going clearly counter to the 
converts’ wishes, and without overlooking the capabilities of 
candidates, seem to have consulted only themselves when 
they gave Elders to each recently founded church.! In the 


* Acts xiv, 23: Xetporovjoavres adbrois Kar’ éxxAnolav mpeoBurépous. 
Note the word avrois, which accentuates the initiative of the Apostles and 
seems to exclude the active participation of the faithful. The verb xXEtporoveiv, 
taken here in the sense Bi to establish, signifies to e/ect in the only other 
text in which it appears, 2 Cor. viii, 19: XEtpotovnbels Ud Tav éxxAnatav 
ouvéxSnuos judy. At Athens it retained its etymological meaning of “ to 
vote with lifted hands,” in particular “‘ to choose someone with lifted hands ” 
in the assembly of the people. But outside of the Greek republics, the 
etymological meaning was early lost and, at the New Testament epoch, 


THE CHURCH 303 


domain of Paul we do not find that the rank and file of the 
faithful ever took part in the election of ecclesiastical digni- 
taries properly so called, for the arbiters and those who were 
commissioned to bring the alms of Corinth to Jerusalem, do 
not belong to the sacred hierarchy, since they were elected by 
the votes of the people. It is certain that neither Titus nor 
Timothy had among his instructions the command to submit 
the choice or the approbation of the deacons and priests to 
the faithful in general, although they are ordered to take 
into account the good reputation of the candidates, both in 
the church and outside of it. Thus even if the government 
of the Apostle was neither despotic nor arbitrary, a demo- 
cratic régime was little to his taste. 


2. Like every perfect society, the Church possesses the 
inalienable right to govern itself, to defend itself, and to 
perpetuate itself, which is derived directly from its right to 
exist. 

The power to govern itself comes to it from God. ‘‘ Take 
heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy 
Ghost hath set you as guardians, to rule the Church of God, 
which he hath purchased with his own blood,’’? says St Paul 
to the Elders of Ephesus, who had hastened to receive his 
last instructions. This text is to be carefully considered. 
The persons in question have only a subordinate authority and 
yet they watch over, inspect, and govern the faithful of 
Jesus Christ. Although they have been appointed and con- 
stituted officials, through the medium of man, they hold their 
authority from the Holy Spirit, from whom in the last analysis 
it is derived. Their charge is a local one and their jurisdic- 
tion restricted, yet they govern the Church of God, because 
the Church is one and indivisible. The power of legislating 
Paul reserves to himself. He knows cnly one authority 
higher than his own—namely, that of Christ, and he knows 
very well how to distinguish the precepts of his Master from 
his own,* but he is conscious also of commanding in the 
name of him whose ambassador he is: ‘‘ If any seem to be a 
prophet or spiritual, let him know the things that I write to 
you, they are the commandments of the Lord,’’* writes Paul 
to the Corinthians, to whom he has just given various in- 








oe 


xetporovety meant usually ‘‘to elect in any way whatever,” or even “ to 
designate, institute (or) establish,” without any accessory idea of a vote 
or an election. Cf. Josephus, Antzg., VII, xi, 1; XIII, ii, 2 (nomination 
of the high priest); VI, xiii, 9; VII, ix, 3 (of the king); Philo, ed. 
Mangey, vol. ii, pp. 58 and 76 (Joseph established governor), etc. 

1 Tim. iii, 1-14; Tit. i, 5-7. Impose not hands lightly upon any man 
(1 Tim. v, 22), nor ordain a neophyte (1 Tim. iii, 6), and let the deacon be 
proved before being raised to a higher rank (1 Tim. iii, 10-13). 

S Acts xx; 28. Ser, COPevitin 210,726> 

Ser 5Cor, Kivi]: 


304 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


junctions. Terrible are his threats to the rebels and the dis- 
obedient. Let no one take his humble exterior and mean 
appearance for weakness: ‘‘ For the weapons of our warfare 
are not carnal, but mighty [with all the might] of God, unto 
the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels, and 
every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of 
God, and bringing into captivity every thought unto the 
obedience of Christ; and having in readiness to punish all 
disobedience when your obedience shall be fulfilled.’”’? He 
arrogates to himself, therefore, an entire sphere of 
sovereignty, not only over the will of the faithful, but even 
over their intelligence—a power truly superhuman, and, as 
he himself says, divine. 

But although the Apostle, neither at Corinth nor elsewhere, 
admits any authority capable of restraining his own, he 
recognizes in all the churches an authority on a level with his 
and below it. He invests Titus and Timothy with his power ;? 
he calls upon the Thessalonians and Corinthians to make use 
of theirs; he congratulates the latter on having used it with 
moderation ;* and he reminds the elders of Ephesus of their 
right and duty to govern the Church of God.® 

If the primitive Church offered to their enemies from with- 
out only a passive resistance, the non possumus of which the 
apostles had given both the formula and the example,°® it 
needed other weapons against internal enemies, subjected to 
its jurisdiction by the fact of their baptism.7 In menacing 
the seditious of Corinth with his severity, Paul does not 
dream that his right to punish the guilty can be questioned : 
‘* Behold, this is the third time I am coming to you; in the 
mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word stand. I 
have told before and foretell, as present and now absent, to 
them that sinned before and to all others, that if I come 
again, I will not spare. ... I write these things, being 
absent, that, being present, I may not deai more severely 
according to the power which the Lord hath given unto me 
unto edification and’ not to destruction.’’® Everywhere the 
Apostle claims with the same energy his right to punish. 
His repression will not be despotic and he will keep within 
legal forms, but he will chastise the offenders according to 
their fault and will pardon only if they repent.® He pre- 
scribes to Timothy the same course: ‘‘ Against an elder 
receive not an accusation but under two or three witnesses. 
Them that sin reprove before all, that the rest also may 
have fear.’’!° 


+y2 \Corcxiit, 10, 42 COre XU A-6: 

te Te Lim ei aed itis ays: 

#7) Thess: ¥)84.3.1 Cortv,i2,13-21Corei, 10,107 

5 Acts xx, 28. * Acts iv, 20; v, 29. 
Te Cor sy 14013: 2: Cor) xii ee (2t0. 
902 Cor sxil,.2T, 4023. Tin yoo 


THE CHURCH 305 


The punishments inflicted by St Paul were a reprimand, 
temporary exclusion, and the anathema. One of the first 
duties of the heads of the Church is to reprove those who do 
evil. There were evidently two kinds of admonitions: one, 
paternal or fraternal, which could be private; the other more 
official and severe, which had to be public. St Paul seems to 
indicate, as does the Gospel, that these two reprimands 
followed each other and served as a prelude to a more serious 
punishment. ‘‘A man that is a heretic (aipetixdv dvOpwror, 
a promoter of schism and divisions), after the first and second 
admonition, avoid, knowing that he that is such an one is sub- 
verted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judge- 
ment.’’* Moreover, excommunication itself had two entirely 
different forms: one was the simple putting into quarantine 
of turbulent, quarrelsome, or scandal-causing Christians, the 
temporary cessation of all relations with them until they had 
amended their conduct; such were the idlers of Thessalonica, 
the public sinners of Corinth,? and the innovators of the 
Pastoral Epistles, unless these last belong to the category of 
those obstinate and incorrigible criminals whom Paul delivers 
over to Satan to teach them not to blaspheme. He had pro- 
nounced that anathema upon Hymenzus and Alexander.? 
For a moment he had thought of fulminating it against the 
man guilty of incest in Corinth, but he soon contented himself 
with a milder penalty,* and even congratulated the Church 
on having pardoned him, for the right to be severe towards 
rebels implies that of forgiving the penitent. 

The care with which certain Greek clubs of revellers and 
social circles sought to prevent the interference of the State 
in their internal affairs, and the penalties which they inflicted 
on offending members, such as fines in money or in kind, 
exclusion from festivals and banquets, and even expulsion 
from membership, cast very little light upon the primitive 
constitution of the Christian communities, which were not 
formed on this model. The organization of Jewish societies 
in the Diaspora would give a more correct idea of them. 
But these Jewish societies, being legal associations, had in 
case of need the support or at least the tolerance of the public 
officials. The council of the elders enjoyed in them a dis- 
cretionary power in both civil and religious matters; and it 
dispensed floggings with astonishing liberality, as well as a 
simple excommunication and a solemn exclusion accompanied 
with an anathema which was doubtless only a mild equivalent 
of stoning, in cases where the latter was not practicable. 
On the contrary, we do not find among the early Christians 
any example of corporal punishment; the penalties were re- 
duced to reprimands, to temporary exclusion, and to excom- 


? Titus iii, 10. 2 2 Thess. ili, 14 and 1 Cor. v, 2-7. 
PS We Rese * 1 Cor. v, 5 ; 2 Cor. ii, 5-9. 
I!. 20 


306 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


munication, coupled with a delivering up of the guilty party 
into the hands of Satan. Not one of these punishments, not 
even the last mentioned, was purely vindictive. This is 
because the Church does not forget the injunctions of its 
divine Founder; its aim is not domination ; its ideal is not to 
inspire fear and to make a show of its force ; the measure and 
limit of its power is the protection of the truth, of which it is 
‘the pillar and ground.’’? 


3. Let us sum up in a few words the conception of the 
Church as it appears from the writings and practice of the 
Apostle. 

All the churches under Paul, from their foundation or very 
soon after, are provided with clergy appointed by him or by 
his delegates. This clergy; besides the deacons, comprises 
other persons called indifferently wpeoPurepo. or erioKoror, 
The names may have been synonymous without their func- 
tions being so; but the synonymy of the names might also 
extend to the functions. Hence we have three distinct hypo- 
theses; either the superior dignitaries were all bishops; or 
some of them were priests and others bishops, although their 
names were the same; or finally they were all merely priests. 
Of these three hypotheses the last is the only satisfactory 
one. The first, which once satisfied Petavius, is absolutely 
devoid of proof and encounters serious objections. The 
second is no less precarious, for what essentially distinguishes 
the bishop from the priest is the power of holy order; 
and we do not find the slightest trace of this power in the 
resident clergy of Paul’s churches. 


1 1 Tim. iii, 15: [Tatrd cot ypddw] tva edfs mas Set €v olkw Oeot ava- 
orpépeacbat, Aris €ativ exxAnaia Beod Cavros, oridos Kai édpaiwpa THs dAnBelas. 
The instruction is addressed to Timothy, but it is a general one and applies 
to all the ecclesiastical dignitaries mentioned in chapter iii, and perhaps to 
the classes of Christians whose duties are indicated in chapter 11. It is 
necessary therefore to translate was Set dvacrpédeoOat by “‘ how it is neces- 
sary to behave,” and not by “‘ how it is necessary to behave ¢hyse/f.’’—The 
expression olxos @Qeod, introduced by iii, 5 (s# guts domut suae pracesse nescit 
quomodo Ecclestae Det diligentiam habebit ?), signifies famzly of God (domus 
Domtnti, Os. viii, 1 ; ix, 8, 15); and thus we avoid the inconvenience of com- 
paring the Church (which in the N.T. never denotes a material edifice) first 
to a house and then to a column. The meaning, therefore, is ‘‘ how it is 
necessary to behave in the family of God, seeing that st 1s (#ris is argu- 
mentative) the assembly of the living God.” 

A column serves either to support a roof or an architrave, or to lift into the 
air, to expose to view, a commemorative monument. The latter sense is 
preferable both on account of the use of the singular (one column alone 
cannot support a roof), and because the first meaning is expressed more 
forcibly by the other term. In fact frmamentum (€Spaiwya from édpaios) 
denotes all that gives solidity to an edifice and assures its duration, like its 
footings, basements, buttresses and pillars. If, therefore, it is the Church’s 
mission to show forth the truth to men, it is because she is visible ; and it is 
her duty to defend this truth against external assaults and the wear and tear 
of centuries, because she is infallible. 


THE CHURCH 307 


Whenever a new community was founded or priests and 
deacons were to be ordained in it, Paul intervened personally 
or sent some one of his delegates : Timothy, on whom he had 
himself laid his hands; Titus, his most active fellow-labourer ; 
probably Luke, who seems to have organized the church of 
Philippi; perhaps Tychicus or Artemas, who were to replace 
Titus in Crete, when the latter was called elsewhere; and no 
doubt others also. But it would be a fallacy to suppose that 
things went on everywhere in the same way, for the situation 
of the churches at Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria 
may have been very different. The hierarchy with three 
degrees of rank must have existed ever since the apostolic 
age. 

While not forming part of the clergy, the widows aided 
them and sometimes took their place in dealing with women. 
They did not enter into the order of widows simply because 
they were widows, but by their express profession of widow- 
hood with the formal ratification of the Church, which took 
them under its charge under certain conditions. As to the so- 
called deaconesses, by these Paul probably means only the 
wives of the deacons or persons who had received from the 
Holy Spirit the special charisma of daxovia,' 


If, in spite of all this, the organization of the Pauline 
churches seems rather rudimentary, and the role of the resi- 
dent authorities a very subordinate one, we must take into 
consideration four circumstances which we are too apt to lose 
sight of. 

All the churches, into whose interior life St Paul’s Epistles 
allow us to cast a furtive glance, are extremely young. The 
oldest have had at most only eight or ten years of existence ; 
the others have just been born. Ought we to be surprised at 
finding them still in tutelage, and can we expect them to have 
already attained their complete growth? 

The cities, which the Apostle had made it his special prero- 
gative to present to Christ, were considered to be among 
the most turbulent and undisciplined of the Roman world. 
If he had left these foundations to themselves, instead of 
keeping them directly under his hand and governing them by 
his delegates, he would have run the risk of seeing them 
ruined by intrigues and intestine quarrels, after the fashion 
of the democratic assemblies of that time, and, indeed, of 
all times. 

There was also the danger of isolation to be guarded 
against. The union of the Jewish Christian communities 
was cemented by national sentiment as much as, if not more 
than, by religious sentiment. The first of those bonds was 
wanting in the Gentile churches, for love of country did not 


+ Concerning priests, deacons, widows and deaconesses, see Vol. I, pp. 341 #7. 


308 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


exist in the Hellenic world, or was confounded with pride in 
the city itself. Under these conditions, a too complete or a 
too hasty autonomy offered a constant danger of schism and 
heresy. 

Perhaps the charismatic gifts, more abundant at the 
beginning, made up in some measure for the lack of hier- 
archical organization. This state of things was transitory, 
but it was able to serve as a period of transition between the 
infancy of the churches and the epoch of their maturity. 


BOOK VI 
THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION 


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CHAT Easel 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 


I—TuHeE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY 


1. Foundations of Christian Morality. 2. The Will of God. 3. Baptismal 
Regeneration. 4. New Relations. 


I, NSTEAD of rolling on in endless sentences, com- 
plicated with sub-clauses and causative particles, 
crammed with digressions and parentheses which 
leave no respite to the eye and mind, like the dogmatic 
parts of Paul’s Epistles, the moral parts, cut, chopped, 

and slashed into minute clauses, are shelled out usually like 

peas from a pod in a monotonous litany without apparent 
sequence, grammatical connection, or any real relation to the 
dominant idea. Nothing is more disconcerting than this 
contrast, and the reader is at times repelled by such an in- 
opportune and disconnected ethical discourse, which seems 
to be suited to all situations and all recipients. Even if the 
moral teaching of the two Epistles to the Ephesians and 
Colossians does form a consistent and summary rule for 
home-life, and even if that of the Epistle to the Romans out- 
lines the principal duties of the citizen towards the govern- 
mental authority and towards his fellow-men, it is not clear 
why the Apostle connects them just with those letters rather 
than any others. Only in the Epistle to the Galatians does 
the moral teaching spring from dogma, and even there nothing 
reminds us of the consummate art of the Epistle to the 

Hebrews, where dogma and morality unite in one harmonious 

whole. They are almost always lists of counsels and precepts 

like the following : 
Rebuke the unruly ; 
Comfort the feeble-minded ; 
Support the weak ; 
Be patient towards all men. . 
Quench not the Spirit ; 
Despise not prophecies ; 
Prove all things ; 


Hold fast that which is good ; 
Avoid all appearance of evil.’ 


‘This phenomenon is not peculiar to the short Epistles; the 
long ones furnish us with numerous examples of it : 


1 1 Thess. v, 14, 19-22. 
311 


312 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Give alms with simplicity ; 

Rule with carefulness ; 

Show mercy with cheerfulness. 

Let love be without dissimulation ; 

Hate that which is evil, cleave to the good. 
Be joyful in hope, 

Patient in tribulation ; 

Persevering in prayer ; 

Provident for the necessities of the saints ; 

Pursuing hospitality. 

Bless them that persecute you ; 

Bless and curse not. 
Rejoice with them that rejoice ; 

Weep with them that weep.' 


In this long series of phrases with no grammatical connec- 
tion or logical unity, it is difficult to see a governing prin- 
ciple of moral teaching. For that is precisely the delicate— 
I was about to say the weak—point of Paul’s moral teaching : 
after having completely done away with the Mosaic Law, 
he never says clearly with what he replaces it. The Law of 
Moses is abolished past return ; Christ is its end and the goal 
towards which it tends, no doubt, but he is also the limit 
where it dies.2 The code of Sinai has been destroyed, nailed 
to the cross. Christians are dead to the Law and the Law 
is dead for them.‘ Children of the free woman, not of the 
bondwoman, it is their right and duty to persevere in the 
liberty which Christ has won for them.® In seeing Paul 
intent on destroying the whole edifice of the ancient Law, 
without appearing to think of reconstructing it, we ask 
with anxiety where this work of demolition is going to stop, 
and on what foundation the obligation of the new dispensa- 
tion is to rest. For the distinction imagined by certain 
exegetes between the ceremonial and the moral law, one of 
which survives and continues to serve as a standard, while 
the other is stricken to death by Christ whom it has killed 
first, this fine distinction is unknown to the Apostle. For 
him the Sinaitic code is indivisible ; it is an edifice that stands 
or falls in one block. Nor is there any reason to inquire 
whether his attitude in regard to the Law was modified with 
time, either in the sense of extreme inflexibility or in that 
of conciliation. His ideas, fully fixed after the apostolic 
gathering of A.D. 50, before he had written a single line of 
his Epistles,® thereafter never varied. At all times he was 
able to use condescension and to tolerate practices which were 
unimportant and consecrated by usage and by religious 
memories, yielding, if necessary, to the occasion,” but from 

1 Rom. xii, 8-15. 2? Rom. x, 4. * Eph.-it,4rs = Colina 

* Rom. vii, 4, 6; Gal. ii, 19 ; Col. ii, 20, etc. 

Seal dV2ig aE ivy ls 

® Gal. ii, 3-7, 14-21, and the incident of Antioch. 


” Acts xvi, 3 (circumcision of Timothy) ; xviii, 18 (vow of St Paul); 
xxi, 26 (sacrifices in the temple and ritual purification); Rom. xiv, 1-6 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 313 


one end of his career to the other he maintained, as a matter 
of principle, the total abolition of the Torah, for the Jews as 
well as for the Gentiles. 

As the ever increasing light thrown upon the natural law 
by revelation is an irrevocable fact, an attempt might be 
made to reconstruct on the ruins of the Torah a new code 
which would be only the natural law illumined in its darkest 
corners by divine revelation. But this system, however 
ingenious it may be, has not the approval of Paul. The 
Apostle certainly recognizes the existence of the natural law; 
he declares that the heathen are inexcusable for having 
violated it ;* he describes conscience as summoning men to the 
bar and pronouncing, according to circumstance, verdicts of 
acquittal or sentence of condemnation ;? but he does not give 
to this internal standard the name of law,* because law is 
for him the expression of a positive will. Moreover, he 
would not allow the Christian, freed from the Law, to retro- 
grade to the state of nature. The Mosaic Law necessarily 
marks a stage in the ascent of humanity, and, if it has to 
disappear, it must be replaced by something better. So, at 
the very moment when he contrasts the régime of the Law 
with the régime of grace, implying that the two states are 
incompatible, he vigorously desires his exemption from all 
law, and declares that he is subject to the Law of Christ. 
Such is the paradox: the Christian is so essentially free that 
he cannot be under the yoke of the Law, yet, nevertheless, he 
is subject to a law. This is because the new system is a true 
law, if one considers its obligatory character, and it is not 
a law, if one thinks of the imperfections. of the Mosaic Law. 
In calling it a law of grace, we are in accordance with the 
mind of the Apostle; in calling it a law of Christ, we are 
in harmony with his language. ‘ 


2. The liberty of the children of God is not licence, and the 
deliverance from the Mosaic yoke is not exemption from all 
restraint. Paul had to protest many times against the false 


(tolerance of the weak who distinguish between meats and days). In 
Gal. ii, 3-4, Paul makes it clearly understood that he might have consented 
to the circumcision of Titus, as he subsequently decided that of Timothy, 
if the Judaizing Christians had not tried to force it on him. 1 Cor. ix, 20, 
21 formulates the general principle of this tolerance: Factus sum /Judaets 
tanguam Judaeus ut Judaeos lucrarer. 

pe ont, dat 2a * Rom. il; 14, 15. 

® Paul’s Jaw is always the positive law. In Rom. ii, 14 (odrot vopor pH 
éyovres €avrois eiot vopuos), the natural law is not called /aw, but the 
pagans are ¢hezr own daw by analogy, because they find in themselves a light 
which replaces the Law. The Gentiles have no Law, they are dvopou, 
1 Cor. ix, 21; Rom. ii, 12. 

« Gal. vi, 2 (6 vdpos to6 Xptorod) ; 1 Cor. ix, 21 (€vopos Xpiorod) ; Rom. 
vi, 15 (ov écper dd vdyuov aAAa vio xdpw). 


S*Gali-y; a3. 


314 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


interpretation of his thought. He was misunderstood. He 
never said that God has abrogated the ancient system without 
substituting for it a more perfect one. At the moment when 
Jesus abolished the régime of the Law, he laid the foundation 
of the régime of grace.” There is here no solution of con- 
tinuity ; the New Testament takes over the moral law of the 
Old, which it supplants. Not content with sanctioning it, it 
perfects and completes it: ‘‘ Whatsoever things are true,”’ 
writes Paul to the Philippians, ‘‘ whatsoever honourable, what- 
soever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever pure, whatsoever 
lovely, whatsoever of good fame, virtuous, and praiseworthy, 
think on these things.’’ There we have all the natural law 
under its various aspects, proposed to the faithful; but it is 
no more merely as a natural law that it compels them: “‘ All 
that you have both learned and received [from me],’’ adds 
Paul, ‘‘ this do ye.’’? Thanks to the revelation of the Gospel, 
the natural law—as also the code of Sinai in its moral part— 
becomes again a positive law. Only the relation of man to 
the law is no longer the same. The principal defect in the 
ancient Law was that of being external to man and little 
adapted to our present fallen state.‘ In order to restore 
equilibrium, it was necessary either to lower the Law to the 
level of fallen man, or to raise man to the level of the divine 
Law. It had been imposed upon the Israelites through the 
double mediation of Moses and the angels amid the terrors 
of Sinai. Born subject to the Law as well as a member of 
the chosen race, the Jew, from the first dawn of reason, 
had to endure its burden whether he liked it or not, which 
was rendered more crushing through the feeling of his own 
impotence.® Here was nothing spontaneous, free, generous, 
and filial. The slave of the Law could only have the thoughts 
of a slave: thoughts of fear, distrust, and melancholy. 
Entirely different is the condition of the Christian. By the 
act of faith and by baptism, which is its seal, he has given 
himself freely to the service of God and has become a soldier 
of Christ. He escapes from the yoke of the Law only by 
abdicating his independence. The will of God, accepted with 
his whole heart and embraced in advance in the measure in 
which it is manifested, becomes his rule of conduct: ‘‘ Know 
you not that by yielding yourselves as slaves to obey anyone, 


1 Rom. iii, 8 ; vi, ary 

% Matt. v, 17 (odn FADov Karadtoat adda wAnpdoat). The word wAnpdcat, 
employed absolutely, must be understood in the most comprehensive sense : 
to verzfy the prophecies and to perfect the Law. In fact, in the Sermon on 
the Mount the ancient Law is abrogated only in order to be at once re- 
established more perfectly (Matt. v, 21, 22, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 43, 44). Each 
opposition to the Law of Moses gives place to a crescendo (Dictum est antt- 
quis... ego autem dico volts). 

3 Phil. iv, 8, 9. “ Rom. vii, 14. 

5 Gal. iii, 19. * Rom. vii, 5-119 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 315 


his slaves you are whom you obey? . . . Now, being made 
free from sin and being subject to God, you have your fruit 
unto sanctification and the end life everlasting.: For the 
wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is life eternal in 
Christ Jesus our Lord.’’! It is hardly to be doubted that 
Paul, when writing these lines, had in view the Jewish slave 
and the Roman soldier. Among the Hebrews slavery differed 
little from ordinary home-life; for compatriots it could not in 
any case be prolonged more than six years without the ex- 
press consent of the interested party. If this consent was 
given, the slave entered with full right and for ever into the 
house of his master, but his position had nothing humiliating 
or degrading in it ; he was part of the family ; he enjoyed the 
religious privileges of the nation; he was a man and a 
citizen, not, as among the Gentiles, a beast of burden. So 
Paul, who so forcibly repudiates any suspicion of cringing 
and servility, loves to call himself the slave of Christ, and 
even the slave of his brethren for the love of Christ. Though 
a slave of Christ, he is also the soldier of Christ. It is well- 
known that the Roman legions enrolled only free men. The 
enrolment of servi, even after a previous enfranchisement and 
in case of compulsion, had always been considered as a bad 
example, incompatible with the dignity of the eagles. The 
recruits, on taking oath, consecrated their life to the imperator 
and bound themselves to an absolute obedience, often harder 
than slavery, but elevated and ennobled by their quality as. 
citizens and by the sentiment of a duty freely assumed. This 
is why the Apostle is so fond of using military language, 
which recalls to him the engagement contracted at baptism 
and the state of dependence in which he has voluntarily placed 
himself by the act of faith which made him a Christian. He 
preferably gives to his disciple the title of a soldier of Christ, ? 
the most honourable that he knows; he adjures the Thessa- 
lonians to put on the armour of theological virtues, the breast- 
plate of faith and of charity, and the helmet of hope ;* in a 
famous panoply he distributes to the Ephesians the whole 
equipment of the legionary, the breastplate, the helmet, the 
short two-edged sword, and the long hide-covered shield, 
without forgetting the sandals and the sword-belt of leather, 


1 Rom. vi, 13-23.—4odAes (with its derivatives Sovdevew, Sovdoi) is 
the pivotal word of the chapter. The whole moral discourse revolves around 
this contrast : formerly you were slaves of sin, mow you are s/aves of justice 
and of God.—The military metaphor, sufficiently indicated by the context, 
where sin personified appears like an emperor having weapons and soldiers 
(vi, 12-14), is emphasized still more by the word wages (éfavia). It would 
have more prominence if we translated xydptoua by donativum (the imperial 
gift granted to the soldiers in addition to their regular pay), as Tertullian 
does, De resurr. carnis, 47. 

* 2 Tim. ii, 3. He also calls Epaphroditus (Phil. ii, 25) and Archippus 
(Philem. 2) his comrades in arms. 

* 1 Thess. v, 8. Reminder of Isa. lix, 17 and of Wisd. v, 17-20. 


316 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


and he sees in these the symbol of as many Christian virtues. ! 
If the metaphors of weapons, of combat, of wages, of 
soldiery and the like recur constantly in his writings,? it is 
because he has continually in mind the oath by which he con- 
stituted himself the liegeman of Christ, an oath which obliges 
him ‘‘not to embarrass himself with the cares of this life, 
but to think only of pleasing his master.’’? As a soldier and 
voluntary slave of Christ, the Christian belongs, therefore, 
no longer to himself. The rule which he must follow, having 
freely accepted it, is the will of God, the will of the Lord. ¢ 
Such is also the external standard which no Christian can 
ignore. 

One of the most certain facts of the apostolic age, although 
the critics have taken some time to ascertain it, is the exist- 
ence of a catechetical teaching of morals, quite uniform in 


* Eph. vi, 13-17. The Christian’s six pieces of armour are (a) the sword- 
belt, which symbolizes the truth, alluding to Is. xi, 5: Zt ertt justitia cingulum 
lumborum ejus et fides cinctorium renum ejus (Fides=}310N, ddAnbera 
[LXX], fidelity, veracity). The Christian has need of it in order to foil the 
artifices of the father of lies—(4) The breastplate (@dépat), symbol of justice 
according to Isa. lix, 17: Judutus est justitia ut lorica. Justice means here 
the totality of the virtues, all necessary for the protection of the heart, the 
centre of the moral life—(c) Sanda/s, narrow and light, emblem of prompit- 
tude in God’s service. The Roman legionaries of the time of Polybius wore 
greaves above the left foot ; but the Apostle does notalludeto them.—(d) The 
buckler, which, like lively fazth, preserves us from the sharp arrows of the 
enemy. Paul does not speak here of the little round buckler (dams), but of 
the large, rectangular buckler (@upeds), measuringabout 4 by 24 feet, formed 
of a frame of bronze covered with fresh skins, which protected the entire 
person except the lower part of the leg.—(e) The helmet (reptxepardia) 
is salvation (Is. lix, 17) or the hope of salvation (1 Thess. v, 8). In fact, it 
protects the head, which is the point at which the adversary aims.—(f ) The 
sword of the Spirit (udxatpa), the sword furnished by the Spirit, or the 
spiritual sword, is the word of God, which assists us to repel the attacks of 
error and falsehood. It is not a question of the long sword (éigos), but of the 
short sword with a stout blade and two edges (udyatpa).—On the complete 
equipment of the Roman legionary see Polybius, Hzszor., vi, 23 and Josephus, 
Bell. Jud., UI,v, 5. It will be remarked that St Paul says nothing of offensive 
weapons, such as the lance (Adyxn, Sdpu, xdvros), the javelin (axwv), etc. 

* Here are some of these texts: 1 Thess. v, 8; 1 Cor. ix, 7; 2 Cor. vi, 7; 
x, 3-6; xi, 8; Rom. vi, 13, 14, 23; xiii, 12; Phil. i, 30; 11, 25; Col. i, 29; 
li, I; iv, 10 ; Eph. vi, 10-18 (cf. iv, 8) ; Philem. 2 and 23; 1 Tim.i, 18; iv, 10; 
vi, 12; 2 Tim. li, 3, 4; iii, 6 ; iv, 7—Cf. Howson, The Metaphors of St Paul, 
London, 1883, and, for the Fathers, Harnack, Mi/itia Christi, die christl. 
Religion und der Soldatenstand in den ersten dret Jahrhunderten, Tiibingen, 
1905. The military language of Tertullian, St Cyprian and Origen is re- 
markable. The following phrase of St Ignatius (4d. Polyc., vi, 2) is to be 
compared with the panoply of St Paul: ’Apéoxere @ orparevecbe (cf. 
2 Tim. ii, 1) ap’ od Kal ra dpcivea Kopileade (cf. Rom. vi, 23; 1 Cor, ix, 3y- 
LH tis tudv Secéprwp (desertor) ebpeO7. Td Barriopa Uudv pevérw ws omda 
(cf. Rom. vi, 13), i] mioris ws mepixepadata (cf. Eph. vi, 17; 1 Thess. v, 8), 
} aydrn ws Sdpu, % vropovr obs mavomAla (cf. Eph. vi, 11-1 3). Ta Sendotra 
Upay Ta épya Yudv (deposita ; for the idea cf. 2 Tim. i, 12), ta ra denenra 
tudv da xouionobe (accepta = what is put to your credit, what is due to you). 

292 Limit, 34. 

* Rom. xii, 2 ; Eph. vi, 6; 1 Thess. v, 18 ; Eph. v, 17. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 317 


its content. St Paul clearly makes allusion to it, when he 
writes to the Corinthians: ‘‘ Timothy will put you in mind of 
my ways, which are in Christ Jesus, as I teach everywhere 
in every church.’’! The ways of Paul are not his conduct, but 
as the word plainly indicates, and as the incidental explana- 
tory clause makes indubitable, his supernatural moral teach- 
ing. Some may find it astonishing, if they will, that so free 
and impulsive a genius should bind himself to a regular and, 
so to speak, stereotyped method of instruction ; but his posi- 
tive testimony is there; he taught ‘‘ everywhere, in every 
church ’’ the same things in the same way, to such a degree 
that it was sufficient for him subsequently to send one of his 
disciples to refresh their memories concerning it. Still more, 
this catechetical teaching existed also elsewhere, and St Paul 
writes to the Romans, to whom he had not preached the 
Gospel: ‘‘ You have obeyed from the heart unto that form 
of doctrine which has been delivered unto you,’’ or perhaps 
with greater force ‘‘ into which you have been delivered.’’* 
All the context shows that this type of doctrine is a moral 
teaching, and the very name of type shows that the trans- 
mission of it was not left to caprice or to individual inspira- 
tion. Paul forbids the Thessalonians to have any intercourse 
with the brethren who may depart from the tradition received 
from him, and he lays the same injunction on the Romans rela- 
tive to the faithful who may go counter to the doctrine that 
has been taught them. Way, tradition, doctrine, type of 
doctrine, didascalia—and even the word catechesis*—all these 
terms come astonishingly from the Apostle’s pen in a sense 
so akin to that of succeeding generations. Thus the will of 
God, proclaimed by Christ, and promulgated by the apostles, ° 
awakened in the neophytes a very concrete idea. When Paul 
said laconically : ‘‘ Do not act as do the Gentiles who have 
not the Law, or like the Jews who have only the Law; let 
your conduct be worthy of saints, worthy of your vocation, 


te7 Cor..iv, 17. ‘See p. 35. 2 Ronis vi,17- 
8 2 Thess. iii, 6 and Rom. xvi, 17. 
“ Gal. vi, 6. 


5 Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, 1902, pp. 68-69, claims that the pre- 
cepts of Jesus have not the force of law in Pau ’s eyes, and he gives for this 
the curious reason that Paul does not consider himself bound to observe them. 
But, in the example which he cites (1 Cor. ix, 14: Dominus ordinavtt its 
gui Evangelium annuntiant de Evangelio vivere)—the obligation regarding 
the faithful—the Apostles can evidently give up their right——When Jesus 
has spoken, Paul has only to transmit his orders, 1 Gore vith 40,012,125) 
ix, 14; Acts xx, 35.—The number of direct appeals to the authority of the 
Lord is not very great, but they must have been much more so in his oral 

reaching. Moreover, there are more allusions to Christ’s words in Paul’s 
Epistles than one would at first 304 ead Cf. Resch, Der Paulinismus und 
die Logia Jesu, Leipzig, 1904, and Juncker, Die Ethtk des Ap. Paulus, 
Halle, 1904. 

Sr Cor: Vi 20 5 x, 5: 


318 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


worthy of the Gospel, worthy of Christ, worthy of God,’’! 
these short phrases said a great deal. They reminded the 
neophyte of the moment when, embracing the faith, he had 
broken with the past, had given himself to God and sub- 
mitted to the law of Christ; they summed up in a word the 
apostolic teaching, of which doubtless nothing can give us 
a more correct idea than the Ways, that little compendium 
of morals inserted in two of the most ancient specimens of 
Christian literature, the Teaching of the Apostles and the 
Epistle of Barnabas. 


3- If it be objected that we put the Christian back again, 
by a subterfuge, under the yoke of the Law from which 
Christ had freed him, and that the situation of the baptized 
infant, inheriting the obligation before knowing what it is, 
is identical with that of the Jewish infant born subject to the 
Law, we reply that such is not the case. No doubt the 
Apostle, addressing himself to converts of recent date, is 
thinking of the actual faith of adults; but his doctrine can 
be applied also to the habitual faith of the Christian child. 
Faith, whether actual or habitual, has always the same ten- 
dency; it is by nature a spontaneous impulse of the mind 
and heart, by which man gives over into the hands of God 
his intelligence and will. If there is a difference, it is wholly 
in favour of habitual faith, for here the Holy Spirit works 
alone and nothing impedes his action. Now the intimate 
impulse of the Holy Spirit cannot be compared to an external 
compulsion ; it elevates man instead of oppressing him; it 
takes from obedience its servile character. The Christian is 
made by baptism subject to the law of grace, as he is born 
subject to the law of nature; but, properly speaking, he 
is not under the law, because he is not, like Israel, under the 
yoke of the Law. For no one will maintain that the natural 
law, inherent as it is in our being, is for man a foreign yoke. 
Now the law of Christ is to the Christian what the natural 
law is to man. Our incorporation into the mystical Christ 
is not only a transformation and a metamorphosis, it is 
a real creation, the production of a new being,? subject to 
new rights and consequently to new duties: ‘‘ Know you not 
that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in 
his death? We are buried together with him by baptism 
into death ; that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory 
of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For 
if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, 

* Rom. xvi, 2 (dgiws rdv dyiwv) ; Eph. iv, 1 (dglws ris KAjoews Hs €xAnOnre) ; 
Phil. i, 27 (dglws tod edayyedlov) ; Col. i, 10 (a€iws rod Kupiov) ; 1 Thess. 
li, 12 (d€iws tod @eod).—Negative rule: do not act like pagans, 1 Cor. vi, 11; 
Eph. iv, 17-21 ; Titus iii, 3-7, etc. 

* 2 Cor. v, 17 (ef us €v Xpior@, naw xriats) ; Eph. ii, 10 («riobévres ev 


X. °I.) ; Gal. vi, 15 ; Eph. ii, 15 ; ii, 22, etc. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 319 


we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing 
this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of 
sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no 
longer.’’! For everyone who has become familiar with Paul’s 
thought this untranslatable phrase has nothing obscure. The 
rite of baptism, doing what it signifies, causes us to be born 
into divine life. It causes us to die to ourselves by burying 
us in the death of Christ ; it infuses into us the divine nourish- 
ment by grafting us on him; he envelops us with his grace 
and spirit by immersing us into his mystical body. Thence- 
forth ** it is no more I that live, but Jesus Christ that liveth 
LED ag 8 

It is evident that this new being required new operations : 
Operatio sequitur esse. In order to know the nature and 
extent of our obligations, it is enough to become acquainted 
with ourselves, and in order to do that it is sufficient to re- 
flect upon the mystery of our supernatural birth. What do 
we see at baptism? A death, a resurrection, a burial, a 
return to the light, and these four things produced by the 
sacramental rite which symbolizes them are destined to 
endure for ever; and not only to endure, but to grow and 
develop. The death of sin is in itself finished and final, for 
Jesus Christ, in dying, breaks the sceptre of sin, and in 
causing us to die with him makes us participants in his 
victory ; but, unlike physical death, death to sin is susceptible 
of more and of less; it is not enough to affirm it; it is neces- 
sary to carry it out to completion. * You are dead and your 
life is hid with Christ in God . . . mortify, therefore, your 
members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, 
lust, evil concupiscence.’’* Theideal is always to carry the state 
of the death of Jesus still further. The life of grace, eternal 
by its nature, desires also to be constantly strengthened and 
renewed : ‘‘ Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the 
things that are above . ... mind the things that are above, 
not the things that are upon the earth.’’> Our burial in 
Christ must follow an analogous process ; hence the Apostle, 
after having said : ‘‘ For as many of you as have been baptized 
in Christ have put on Christ,’’ does not fail to add: “ Put 
on the Lord Jesus Christ,’’* for this act permits of unlimited 
degrees. Finally, Paul begs more and more clarifying light 
for the neophytes, illumined by baptism, and urges them to 
proceed from glory to glory.® 


1 Rom. vi, 3-6. The principal verb is in the aorist (€BarticOnpev, ovve- 
radnpev, ovveoravpwOn) because it expresses the sacramental rite which passes ; 
but the results produced are in the present, and the consequences for the 
moral or glorified life are in the present or ‘future (ctpduroe yeyovapev, THs 
dvaotdoews €adueba). Cf. Gal. ii, 20. 

SiC oh: 115-5. LBs} RAT Ce B 

¢ Gal. iii, 27 ; Rom. xiil, 14. 

6 Eph. i, 18; 2 Cor. iil, 18, etc. 


320 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


4. Paul’s moral teaching plainly has a solid foundation; 
it is supported on the one side by the positive will of God, 
proclaimed by Jesus Christ, promulgated by the apostles, and 
accepted freely by the neophytes in their first act of faith; 
and, on the other side, by baptismal regeneration and by the 
new relations which it engenders; for, from the super- - 
natural being received at baptism, special relations with each 
of the three divine Persons are derived : 


A relation of sonship with the Father; 
A relation of consecration to the Holy Spirit; 
A relation of mystical identity with Jesus Christ. 


To analyze these three relations and to deduce the corol- 
laries from them would be to expose in detail the whole of 
the Apostle’s moral system. .~Such is not our aim here; we 
wish only to outline our route with a few landmarks; but this 
rapid glance will reveal to what heights Paul rises and lifts 
us. 

Between the adoptive sonship of the New Testament and 
the theocratic sonship of the Old there yawns a gulf. The 
latter was collective and came to the individual only through 
the medium of the chosen people. It was, properly speak- 
ing, Israel, and not the Israelites, who was the son of God. 
If anyone in the Old Testament receives this title exception- 
ally, it is because he bears upon his brow a prophetic re- 
flection of the Son par excellence. The Christian, on the 
contrary, is a son individually and by full right; the Holy 
Spirit puts upon his lips the name of Father, which marks 
his new relation to God; but with the prerogatives of a son 
he assumes also the duties of gratitude, confidence, and love.! 

The presence of the Holy Spirit, which consecrates us, as 
a temple, creates between him and us a new bond, difficult 
to define, but impossible to deny. Now, every new relation 
is a source of new obligations: hence, for the Christian the 
duty not to grieve the Spirit,? nor to quench it,? and, above 
all, not to destroy or profane his temple.* But it is also the 
source of glorious privileges. Asa guest in the just soul, the 
Spirit is not inactive there; he produces in it charismata, 
gifts, and permanent graces; he pours out upon it unction 
and light; he engraves upon it the law of God in indelible 
characters. Thus is explained that enigmatical phrase: ‘‘ If 
you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.’’® The 


* Rom. viii, 15-17.—Here we are only dealing with the progress of revela- 
tion and with the different way in which the two Testaments describe the life 
of the just. Jn reality, the saints of the Old Testament possessed, like those 
of the New, sanctifying grace, participation in the divine nature, adoptive 
sonship and the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

4<E phony, a0, * 1 Thess. v, Io. 

* 1 Cor. iii, 16-17; vi, 19; 2 Cor. vi, 16; Eph. ii, 21 

OMGale vo is. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 321 


Christian can obey the law, without being under it, because 
the law is no more for him an external, oppressive yoke, but 
an inward principle which guides him and urges him forward. 
Far from enslaving and crushing him, ‘‘ the law of the Spirit 
of life delivers him from the law of sin and death.’’? 

The doctrine of the mystical body, Paul’s masterpiece, 1s 
no less fruitful in morals than in dogma. The first time he 
presents it, he himself makes the application of it with a 
clearness that leaves nothing to be desired. Showing that 
the diversity of the members and the unity of life are essential 
to this body of which Christ is the head and the Holy Spirit 
the soul, he deduces from it the reciprocal duties of love, 
justice, and solidarity, with the obligation for each of the 
members to collaborate for the general good.” It is all a con- 
cise programme of social morality, the originality of which 
consists in reconciling the demands of the common welfare, 
certainly not with selfishness, but with the instinctive quest 
of personal interest. One can hardly ascribe to chance the 
fact that the other three descriptions of the mystical body 
serve precisely as a preface to the second part of the Epistles, 
in which morals are clearly separated from dogma.* The in- 
tention appears manifest in the Epistle to the Romans, and 
hence the miscellaneous recommendations recently quoted 
are not to be wondered at. Precepts and counsels, unlike in 
appearance, find their unity in this principle: ‘‘ We are one 
body in Christ and individually members one of another.” 
Is it not evident that the corollary of this principle is our 
duty ‘‘ to love one another with the charity of brotherhood ”’ 
and ‘‘ with honour to prefer one another?’’* The doctrine 
of the mystical body is presented under a somewhat different 
aspect in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. 
The obligation, which comes from it for each of the members, 
is to aspire to the perfection of the Head ;° for, in order that 
there may be harmony and proportion, each Christian must 
strive to grow to the measure of Christ. 


IJ—Precepts oF SocraL MoRALITY 


1. The Christian and the Civil Authority. 2. The Christian Family. 
3. Christian Marriage. 


1. Baptismal regeneration is a second birth which renders 
Christians equal and free. ‘‘ For as many of you as have 
been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither 
Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; for you are 


2 Rom. vili, 2. 2 1 Cor. xii, 12-27. See above, pp. 286-7. 

3 Rom. xii, 4, 5 ; Eph. iv, 12-16; Col. il, 19. 

# Rom. xi, 10. 

6 Col. ii, 19. It is the mystical Christ who effects his own growth (rjv 
avéyow rod owparos motretrat); the members have only to oppose no 
obstacle to it. Cf. Eph. iv, 15, 16. 

II. 21 


eee THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


all one in Christ Jesus.’’! Differences of nationality, con- 
dition and sex no longer count for anything and disappear 
before that higher unity which reconciles them ; they are in 
some way absorbed by the new specific form which the 
neophyte puts on, and which is nothing else than Christ. 
So much for equality. Christian liberty is born from the same 
principles. Set free by Christ, the Christian belongs there- 
after only to Christ; the liberty received by him at baptism 
is inalienable : ‘* Christ has given you liberty ; stand fast, and 
fall not back again under the yoke of bondage.’’? The refer- 
ence here is to the yoke of the Law; but the application of 
the principle is general: ‘‘ Ye are bought with a price ; be- 
come not the slaves of men.’’$ One can imagine how evil- 
minded people could abuse these maxims. Both St Paul and 
St Peter had therefore to protest against the false inter- 
preters of their thought: ‘‘ You are free,”’ says one, ‘‘ but 
you are also servants of God; use not your freedom as a mask 
to disguise your wickedness.’’* ‘* You have been called unto 
liberty,’’ says the other, ‘‘ only make not liberty an excuse 
for the flesh.’”’> Do not imagine that you are exempt from 
the bonds of subordination and dependence and of engage- 
ment and contracts, of relations established by nature or 
created by casual circumstance. Christian equality consists 
in the fact that from a religious point of view all have the 
same rights and the same duties, are dependent on the same 
sovereign judge and treat directly with the same God. If 
Christian liberty delivers us from the slavery of sin and from 
the old Law, it does not at all suppress the hierarchical rela- 
tions of society and the family. Fraternity itself, the most 
characteristic mark of Christians, which would seem naturally 
to bring with it only privileges, also imposes duties: mutual 
support, tolerance, and the obligation to avoid scandal. Thus 
the social duties of the Christian are in direct ratio to his 
rights. 

The word of Jesus, ‘‘ Render unto Cesar the things that 
are Cesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s;*” is°4 
remark so incisive that it must have graven itself deeply into 
the memories of all who heard it. It was no less appropriate 
to inculcate this duty and to show the reason for it; and this 
is what St Paul does in chapter xiii of the Epistle to the 
Romans : 


Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no power but 
from God ; and those that are are ordained of God. Therefore he that 
resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they that resist 
purchase to themselves damnation. For princes are not a terror to 
good deeds, but to the evil. 

Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good 


SE REI IEnreerereerareerer see enna 
? Gal. iii, 27, 28. * Gal. v, I. * 1 Cor. vii, 23. 
* 1 Pet. ii, 16. AAA AL 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 323 


and thou shalt have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister 
to thee for good. But if thou do what is evil, fear ; for he beareth not 
the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doth evil. Wherefore be subject of necessity, not 
only for wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. 

For therefore also you pay tribute ; for they are the ministers of God, 
serving diligently unto this purpose. 

Render therefore to all men their dues ; tribute to whom tribute is due ; 
custom to whom custom is due; fear to whom fear; honour to whom 
honour. 


There has been much discussion about the seasonableness 
of these recommendations. As the Jews at Rome were 
notorious for their turbulence, and as the lawfulness of the tax 
paid to foreigners was a burning question in Israelite circles, 
it has been supposed that the neophytes were won over by 
the revolutionary ideas of the Palestine patriots. But neither 
Suetonius nor Arrian hint that the turbulence of the Roman 
Jews was directed against the established power; and the 
Jews of the Diaspora, far from claiming independence on 
theocratic grounds, like the zealots of Palestine, were, on 
the contrary, proud of their fidelity and loyalty ; the empire 
had no more submissive subjects. Moreover, the Jewish 
element formed only a small part of the Church of Rome. 
There is, therefore, no use in seeking any special seasonable- 
ness in this teaching of the Apostle, who seems here purposely 
to use the most general terms, ‘‘ every soul, the power, higher 
authorities, ministers,’’ avoiding thus every allusion to local 
conditions. We find ourselves, consequently, confronting a 
theoretical rule regarding the attitude of Christians in respect 
to the civil power. 

Paul formulates these three propositions: By right and in 
principle all power comes from God.—In fact and in practice 
the established power is from God.—Furthermore, the power 
is exercised in the name of God. 

The first two propositions were almost an axiom among 
Paul’s Jewish contemporaries. The Apostle confines him- 
self to proclaiming them, distinguishing them, as is proper, 
and adding to them the evident consequence that to resist 
the power established by God is to resist the command of God 
himself. He insists even more upon the third proposition. 


1 Rom. xiii, 1-2: [aca ypvy) eovoias trepexovcats vroraccécbw: ov 
yap €orw efovaia ef put) Ud Oeod, at Sé odcat bad Oeod reraypevat Eloi: wore 
6 dvriracodpevos TH e€ovoig TH Tod Oeot Siarayy_ avOcornKxev.—(a) The 
precept is a general one: it is addressed to every soul (a_ biblical 
expression for every person, every individual) and concerns all higher 
authority, all the possessors of public authority by whatever name they may 
be called. The Latin word subiimioribus gives us to understand that the 
reference is only to the supreme authority, and vmepexovoais, if it adds 
anything to ¢fovoiais, must have this meaning. Cf. 1 Pet. ii, 13 (etre 
Baciret «is drepéxovrt) ; Wisd. vi, 5 (where the kings are also vrepéxovres). 
In fact, St Paul subsequently speaks of princes who bear the sword, levy 
tribute and execute vengeance ; all of which can apply only to the supreme 


324 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The prince is the ‘‘ minister of God’’ (cdxovos), ‘‘ the lieu- 
tenant of God ”’ (Aecrovpyés), whose duty it is to promote the 
welfare of society; especially to praise and reward good 
citizens and to terrify and punish the bad. If he bears the 
sword, it is in the name of God that he does so; if he 
avenges crime, it is also in the name of God. ‘“‘ It is neces- 
sary, therefore, to obey him, not only through fear of the 
punishment to be avoided, but also on account of the dictates 
of conscience,’’ for the wrath with which the prince menaces 
the rebellious is just and sanctioned by God. It is also a 
matter of conscience to pay one’s taxes. In demanding 
them, the sovereign is no less the minister of God, appointed 
to this office for the defence and good organization of the 
society of which he has the custody.! The phrase which 
sums it all up: ‘‘ Render, therefore, to every man his due,”’ 
shows that this it not of simple counsel, but of real obligation. 





authority.—(4) Authority, considered in itself and in the abstract, is estab- 
lished by God (ta6 @eod) ; God, the founder of society, is also the institutor 
of authority, without which no society can exist. Moreover, we cannot con- 
ceive of an authority which is not derived from God, the principle of all 
physical and moral being.—(c) The concrete authorities (ai 5¢ odca:—eéovoiat 
being understood—means the authorities which actually exist: that is to say, 
the actual possessors of authority) are constituted, sanctioned and willed by 
God. It is, then, a universally received truth that princes receive their power 
from God: Wisd. vi, 3 (€560y mapa rob Kupiov 4 Kpdrnois tyiv Kal 4 
Suvacreia mapa tyicrov); John xix, 11 (Won haberes potestatem adversum 
me ullam, nist t1bt datum esset desuper) ; Josephus, Bell. Jud., Il, viii, 7 (od 
yap dixa Geo reptyivecbaitwt 76 dpxew); Enoch, xlvi, etc. Of course, St Paul 
teaches us nothing about the origin of power, whether direct or indirect, 
mediate or immediate. Nor does he say what is to be done in case the 
authority is doubtful, contested, clearly usurped and illegitimate. He 
takes his standpoint in the normal conditions of life——(d) In whatever way 
the actual authority may proceed from God, it governs in the name of God, 
and to resist it is to resist the will and the command of God (79 8:aray9). 
The consequence is evident. 

* Rom. xiii, 3-6. The exercise of power is also derived from God : (a) 
Princes (dpyovres are equivalent to chiefs of State, whatever their particular 
name may be) have to promote the public welfare: Qeod ydp Sudxovds éorw aot 
eis 76 dyafdv. Only the wicked are to fear them; the good have nothing 
to fear, for princes are the “ ministers of God for the good ” of society, as 
well as for the good of individuals (cot).—(4) But they are also the ministers 
of his vengeance: @eo0d ydp Sudxovds €orw, Exdixos els dpyiv TS TS KaKOV 
mpacaovrt. They do not bear the sword, the symbol of the right of life 
and death, in vain—a formidable right which can come only from the Master 
of life. Their acts of vengeance are those of God himself ; it follows that it 
is necessary to obey them not only on account of the prospect of punishment 
(dia rHv opyhy, cf. verse 2: xpiya.Aypbovrar), but on account of conscience 
(1a tv ovvetdnow) because the principle of punishment inflicted by them 
is a Just one.—(c) They are also commissioned by God to levy the taxes 
necessary for the good administration of a State: Aetroupyol yap Oeod low 
els avtd rodro mpocxaprepobyres. The word Aetroupyéds is still stronger 
than d:dxovos, for it often expresses a sacred function. Princes are dili- 
pou, occu ied (zpooxaprepotvres) in this work (eis adré roéro), and that as 

etroupyot Weod. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 325 


At the moment when the teacher of the Gentiles wrote these 
lines, the imperial authority appeared everywhere under its 
most favourable aspect; the famous quinquennium of Nero 
was still in existence; the world was governed by sages and 
philosophers ; in spite of the abuses, vexations, and exactions 
of some of its delegates in the provinces, Rome symbolized 
order, justice, and liberty ; Paul had had scarcely any occasion 
to do otherwise than be well pleased with the Roman magis- 
trates whom he met with in his journeyings. But even when 
the feeling of the authorities changed towards the. Church, 
the teaching of the Church did not change. It was then that 
Paul enjoined upon Timothy to cause prayers to be made “‘ for 
kings and for all in authority,’’! and that he ordered Titus 
to preach submission and obedience to established powers.? 
It was then that Peter wrote: ‘‘ Be ye subject, therefore, to 
every human institution for God’s sake; whether it be to the 
king as supreme, or to governors as sent by him for the 
punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. For 
so is the will of God.’’? A modern commentator claims to 
have discovered a curious contrast in these two apostles. 
Peter is thought to have been a republican, and Paul a 
monarchist ; the Roman citizen being an imperialist in politics 
as well as in theology, while the Galilean Jew shares the 
revolutionary tendencies of his compatriots.4 That shows 
too much imagination for a critical commentator. The con- 
trary paradox could also be maintained; for St Peter speaks 
of the ‘‘ king’’’ (the name of the Roman emperor in the East) 
and of his delegates, propretors or proconsuls; while St 
Paul, to render his teaching independent of times and places, 
abstains from every special designation. A less illusory 
difference is the fact that the teacher of the Gentiles, by what 
is perhaps a unique exception, keeps himself constantly on 
the ground of natural right and indicates to the faithful their 
duty as citizens and as men, while his colleague, placing 
himself on the ground of Christian right, appeals to the will 
of God and to the command of the Lord. 

Obedience to the civil law has for its limit the divine law ; 
but it was not well to bring up the hypothesis of a conflict 
between the law of God and the Jaw of man. If the case 
occurred, the faithful had the Gospel! precept for their guide ;° 
their reason would tell them that the higher authority ought 
to prevail, and the conduct of the apostles before the Sanhe- 
drin would dictate to them the answer to make. With this 
exception, which does not detract from the general principle 
to obey established authority, the Christians of the first cen- 
turies were always distinguished for their submission. Their 


A2y amin, 2-2) Se Tituslit. *-r) Peto, 13-27: 
“ Bigg, The Epistles of St Peter, etc. Edinburgh, 1901, p. 139. 
5 Matt. xxii, 21; Mark xii, 17; Luke xx, 25. 


326 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


deference to the public authorities was the triumphant defence 
of their apologists and the immediate refutation of popular 
calumnies about a pretended hostility of the Christians to 
imperial institutions. St Clement of Rome, St Polycarp, 
St Justin, Tertullian, and Origen, not to mention others, teach 
us with what zeal the infant Church conformed to the in- 
structions of St Paul.’ If, so long as the empire remained 
pagan, the Church did not favour the participation of its 
members in public functions, and regarded with special dis- 
favour the military profession, ? it was because these duties, 
which were moreover optional, almost always exposed the 
neophyte to acts of idolatry, and put him often to the alter- 
native of choosing between apostasy and martyrdom. And 
let us not forget that the Church, from the beginning, was 
conscious of being a distinct society, invested by its divine 
founder with the power of governing and perpetuating itself. 
It is acting on this principle that Paul judges and punishes 
Christians guilty of creating scandals, and condemns so 
strongly a recourse to pagan tribunals.? 


2. God is the author of the family, as he is the author of 
society ; but in the Christian family, he is the prototype of 
the master, the father and the husband, while the servant, 
the son, and the wife find their symbol and model in the 
Church. Christianity does not break marriages, it con- 
solidates them by sanctifying them; it does not loosen the 
natural ties between fathers and children, it sanctions and 
strengthens them ; it respects the legitimate relations between 
masters and slaves, but it supernaturalizes them. The great 
principle inculcated in his converts by St Paul is to change 
nothing in the external conditions of their life, provided that 
these agree with the precepts of the Gospel. To put off 
vice and to put on Christ, but to remain in the post assigned 
to them by Providence, such is his word of command and 
countersign. * 

This recommendation referred above all to slaves, who 
pressed forward in crowds to the Church’s open arms. You 
need not be troubled any more about your condition, the 
Apostle said to them; in Christ you are all brethren and the 
equals of free men; serve them for the love of Jesus Christ, 
but without enslaving yourselves to them morally. With a 
firm hand he points out to both masters and slaves their 


? Fine prayer for the rulers in St Clement, Ad Corinth., lxi. Cf. St 
Polycarp, Ad Philipp., xii, 3; St Justin, Apo/., i, 14, 71; St Athenagoras, 
Legat., 37; Theophilus, 4d Auzol., i, 11; Tertullian, Apol., 30-36; Ad 
Scapul., 2; Origen, Contra Cels., viii, 73. 

* Cf. Hamack, Militia Christi, die christl. Religion und der Soldaten- 
stand tm den ersten dret Jahrhunderten, Tiibingen, 1905. 

* 1 Cor. vi, 1-6. Cf. Vol. 1, pp. 103-104. 

* 1 Cor, vii, 20: Exacros é& rf KAjcet 7 éxAjOn ev ravry pevérw. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 327 


reciprocal duties.* Slaves are to ‘‘ obey their masters accord- 
ing to the flesh, in all’’ that is not contrary to the law of 
God. They are to do so with a sentiment of apprehension 
inspired by the fear of the Lord, and not by the fear of 
punishment; ‘‘ in simplicity of heart,’’ without hypocrisy or 
dissimulation ; ‘‘ from the depths of their souls,’’ with a 
spirit of faith and from a supernatural motive; with a view 
to pleasing God and not to flattering their master by a re- 
doubled zeal shown in his presence. They are also to stimulate 
their obedience by the prospect of their future reward and 
think that it is an affair of justice, that their conscience is 
concerned in it and that they will have to render an account 
of their conduct at the tribunal of the supreme Judge. In 
their turn Christian masters must ‘‘ observe in regard to their 
slaves the written and natural law’’; go beyond the strict 
law and apply to them rules of ‘‘ equity’’; abstain from 
those horrible and degrading ‘‘threats’’ of which the 
pagans were so lavish; and finally, remember their common 
Master and Judge who is no respecter of persons.? Such is 
the rule that will henceforth govern the relations between 


* Col. iii, 22-25 ; Eph. vi, 5-8. (A) Extent of obedience : it is universal 
(xara mdvra), but this universality is limited by two things: by the fact that 
the Apostle is addressing himself here to Christian slaves and masters, which 
permits him to suppose that the latter will order nothing contrary to the 
divine law, and by the addition ‘“* according to the flesh,’”’ which defined the 
earthly and temporal sphere to which the authority of the masters and the 
subjection of the slaves is confined.—(B) Qualities of obedience: (a) stncere, 
‘*in simplicity of heart,” exempt from all pretence and duplicity ;—(d) mingled 
with fear (wera doBov xal rpduov, Eph. vi, 5), a fear inspired not by men, 
but by the Lord (foBovpevor rov Kupwv, Coal. iii, 22) ;—(c) tnternal, 
“ from the heart”’ (€« yuyjs), and consequently the same, whether out of the 
master’s sight or under his inspection (yu) €v of@aApodovAlats, Col. iii, 22 ; 
p12) Kata dPBadrpodovdAiay, Eph. vi, 6), for it is not its purpose to flatter the 
man or to please him (ws avOpwrapeckot) ;—(d) supernatural, dictated by 
the thought of doing the will of God (zowidvres ro OéAnua rot Geot, Eph. 
vi, 6) and of serving Christ (r@ Kupip Xptor@ Sovdevere, Col. iii, 24).— 
(C) Motives of obedience : prospect of heavenly rewards (Eph. vi, 8 ; Col. iii, 24) 
and the punishments with which injustice is threatened (Col. iii, 25). 


® Col. iv, 1: O& KUptoe 7d Sixatov Eph. vi.9: Kat of xvptos ta adra 

A ET - 4 / a \ b , > 
xal riv Lodrnra Tois SovAas mapéxeobe, woreire mpds adrovs, amevres Try 
amreAjv, ; , 

q ” “A A ~ 
eiddres Sts Kal duets Exere KUpiov dv — eld des GTt Kal avTdv Kai vpdV oO 
~ > a 4 

ovpay@. KUpiés €orw €v ovpavois, Kal mpocwe 


moAnpia ovK Eorw map’ avTa. 

According to Colossians, masters are to observe justice towards their slaves 
(rd Slxavov), which proves that if the slaves are not protected by human law, 
they are protected by divine law. The masters are moreover to maintain 
equity (iodrns), which sometimes goes beyond strict legal right, for it is 
inspired not only by justice, but by charity. The word ‘odrys does not 
denote equality of treatment in regard to all the slaves, nor the Christian 
equality which is to be maintained between slaves and masters, as several 
commentators think.—The expression 7a atta moveire apds avrovs signifies : 
‘“« Act in the same way towards them ; maintain towards them a line of conduct 
analogous to that which I recommend to them; be inspired by the same 
principles,” 


328 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


master and slave. But when the Apostle lays aside his role 
of legislator and speaks as counsellor and father, his heart 
makes him speak for the slave Onesimus in sublimely pathetic 
and tender accents. Never had been heard such a lesson in 
fraternity. 

The position of Christian slaves under a pagan master 
might become almost intolerable. St Paul does not, like 
St Peter,’ limit himself to reminding them that they will on 
that account have more merit in God’s eyes. Titus is com- 
manded to enjoin on such converts ‘‘ to be obedient to their 
masters, to please them in all things, not gainsaying and not 
defrauding, but showing them a good fidelity, that they may 
adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.’’? The 
poor slaves are transformed into apostles; they become by 
their patience and submission to every trial mute preachers 
of the faith. Who can say how many recruits to the infant 
Church were gained by the heroism of the Christian slaves ? 
Yet certain of them, less impregnated with the Christian 
spirit, were more anxious to secure their rights than to per- 
form their duties. Some served pagans unwillingly, thinking 
they did them too much honour, and thus gave them occasion 
to blaspheme the name of the true God and to calumniate the 
Gospel. Others behaved with negligence in the service of 
Christian masters precisely because they were Christians; 
but. this, the Apostle told them, is to repay the gentleness 
and kindness of your benefactors with ingratitude.® 

There was no need of insisting much on the mutual duties 
of parents and children. If the Jews by a perverse casuistry 
sometimes eluded the fourth commandment of the Deca- 
« logue,* they could not be ignorant of it; and the Gentiles, 
when they were wanting in the respect and obedience due 
to their parents, did not escape the sting of conscience. 
Paul therefore deals very briefly with this subject : ‘‘ Children, 
obey your parents in all things, for this’is well pleasing to 
the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children, lest they be 
discouraged.’’® In addressing children, he does not mention 
the exceptional and almost chimerical case of Christian 
parents ordering their offspring to do something contrary 
to the divine law. In the parallel passage the commandment 
of the Decalogue is quoted, less as a proof of additional 


+1 Pet: ii,-18. * Titus ii, 9, 10. 9) y "Limo vie 
* Matt. xv, 3-6. * Rom. i, 30. 
eee e . 
* Col. iii, 20: Ta réxva traxovere Eph. vi, 1-3: Ta rékva, traxovere 
Tots yovetdat Kata mavra, Totro yap Tots yovedow tudv ev Kupiy Tobro yap 
by 
evapearov €otw ev Kupi. €ort Stxatov. Tia «rd. (Ex. xx, 12). 


According to Colossians the obedience of children must be universal 
(xara mdvra); for this, from the Christian point of view (é xupiw), is 
“pleasing” to God and men. According to Ephesians the obedience must 
proceed from a supernatural motive (év xupiw refers to draxovere and not to 
yovedow). 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 329 


authority than by reason of the promise with which the 
Hebrew lawgiver accompanies it. It was unnecessary to 
command parents to love their children; that is a sentiment 
which nature imprints upon the heart; it was sufficient to 
remind them of their -duty to rear them as becomes 
Christians.!_ Nevertheless, force must not degenerate into 
harshness, nor firmness into tyranny. A Spartan mode of 
education is not to Paul’s taste. He does not want parents 
to make their children timid by reason of their unreasonable 
demands. By stifling all spontaneity, confidence, and free- 
dom in them, or by an uncalled-for severity, they will pro- 
duce in them dissimulation, slavish fear, and the habit of 
lying. 

It is impossible to offer husbands and wives a loftier ideal 
than that which Paul proposes to them: ‘‘ Wives, be subject 
to your husbands, as it behoveth in Christ. Husbands, love 
your wives and be not bitter towards them.’’? If he had 
limited himself to this laconic precept, we should never have 
suspected the profound reason for it. Fortunately he com- 
ments on it himself in the Epistle to the Ephesians: ‘‘ Let 
women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord; because 
the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of 
the Church, which is his body, whereof he is the Saviour. 
Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the 
wives be to their husbands in all things. Husbands, love 
your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered 
himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by 
the laver of water in the word of life, that he might present 
it to himself, a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle 
or any such thing.’’> The duties of the wife are comprised in 
submission inspired by a supernatural motive (as 7@ Kupiy). 
The obligation of the husband includes love, devotion, and a 
constant care to assure the happiness of his wife, in imita- 
tion of Christ sacrificing himself for the Church. Sublime 
model for both of the Christian consorts! The Old Testa- 
ment was fond of employing the allegory of marriage, in 
order to make comprehensible the intimate union—unique 
in its wav—which existed between Jehovah and the chosen 
race: St Paul, for his part, wishes that the still closer union 
of Christ with his Church should serve as a rule and standard 
for the intimacy of the conjugal tie. 

1 Col. iii, 21: Of warépes, wr) epe- Eph. vi, 4: Kal of marépes, ur 
Oilere 7a. réxva Suay, va ph dOvudow. mapopyllere ra téxva tudv, ddAd €x- 

rpéfere atra ev maidela nal vovdecig 
xuplov.™ 


Parents have the duty of not irritating their children unreasonably and on 
every occasion (épeO/Zew in a good sense means to ‘“ stimulate,” but in a 
bad sense to “ irritate””—for example, to tease animalJs in a cage ; mapopyllew, 
used more frequently, has only the second meaning). 

® Col. iii, 18, 19. * Eph. v, 22-28. 


330 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


3. The revelation of justice and perfection that Christianity 
brought to the world, and which was destined to revolu- 
tionize it, appears nowhere with more clearness than in the 
new conception of marriage. Progress, which cannot fail to 
react upon the mutual relations of husbands and wives, 
characterizes it from the beginning in four ways: unity, in- 
dissolubility, equal rights, and sanctity. 

Under the influence of Roman legislation, which forbade 
it, polygamy was tending to disappear. Nevertheless, it is 
too much to say that ‘‘ at that epoch there was no more 
question of bigamy or polygamy among real Jews.’’ Neither 
the Talmud nor the Gospel shows any trace of those real 
Jews who would have had scruples about making use of the 
legal permission. Josephus cites the Mosaic provisions at 
length without speaking of their having become obsolete or 
feeling obliged to apologize for them. It does not appear that 
Herod was blamed for having nine wives at the same time. 
In reality, for the Jews of that time, as for the Mohammedans 
of to-day, a plurality of wives, although still lawful, was a 
luxury which only the rich could allow themselves. On the 
contrary, it was opposed to the principles of Christianity. 
Jesus abolished it by reminding men of the fact that in the 
designs of the Creator the man and the woman were intended 
to become one flesh.! Such an intimate union excluded all 
promiscuity, and the symbolical signification of the Christian 
marriage, representing the marriage of the Church and Christ, 
excluded it still more. Moreover, ecclesiastical history does 
not offer a single example of bigamy officially tolerated ; it 
was necessary to wait until the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century before seeing this monstrous abuse sanctioned. 

The doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage is no more 
peculiar to Paul than is that of its unity. He merely pro- 
claims it in the name of the Lord;? but perhaps he does teach 
it more clearly than the Evangelists; for to the party 
separated from the other for any cause whatever, he leaves 
only two alternatives: either to become reconciled or to 
abstain from a new marriage,* which presupposes in any 
hypothesis that the previous marriage still exists. The ex- 
ception which he appears to make in the case called ‘‘ Paul’s 
privilege ’’ is not a real exception, since it does not refer to 
a Christian marriage.4 

More characteristic is the teaching concerning the equality 
of rights between husbands and wives. This does not mean 
an absolute equality which would destroy the subordination 
essential to the conjugal union. The relation of the head to 


Mark x, 8 ; Matt. xix, 5 (quoting Gen. ii, 24). 

1 Cor. vii, 10: rots 8€ yeyaunndow mapayyéMw, ox eye) adr’ 6 KUptos. 
1 Cor. vii, 11; av 5€ yupiobf, wevérw dyapos 7} T®@ avdpi xatadr\ay7rw. 
1 Cor. vii, 12-16 ; ¢f Vol. I, pp. TI4-115. 


1 
2 
“3 
4 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE oRy: 


the body is a relation of inequality.1_ The natural subjection 
of the woman to the man, a subjection symbolized by the 
veil, appears in several ways in the story of creation.’ The 
man was not taken from the woman, but the woman from 
the man ;° the man was not created for the woman, but the 
woman for the man;* the woman is the reflection of the 
man, as the man is the reflection of God.*° The following 
ascending gradation can be established : the woman, the man, 
Christ, God.* And to follow Paul te the end, let us add that 
the man was created first and was seduced only after the 
woman.’ However, there are compensations. If the woman 
has need of the man, man also has need of the woman, and 
if the first woman was taken from man, man is now born of 
the woman.® But the conjugal rights and duties are the 
same; the privilege of Paul has to do with every married 
convert, with the wife as well as the husband °° and both are 
equally bound to maintain the stability of the Christian home, 
although the declaration of this duty insinuates, by a delicate 
shade of meaning, the wife’s subordination.*° 

The moral masterpiece of Christianity is the sanctification 
of marriage. The conjugal duty is plainly lawful—this is 
the express teaching of Paul—and the name of duty alone 
would prove its lawfulness.?* If marriage in general is good, 
as a divine institution, Christian marriage is holy, as a 
visible sign of a sacred thing. Certainly virginity is better ;*? 
but that is a grace which Paul is happy to have received and 
desires for other Christians,!* but imposes upon no one. Not 
only is virginity better, but widowhood even is preferable. ** 
A second marriage bars the candidate on the threshold of 
admission to the clergy.15 However, there are cases where 
marriage and even a second marriage are to be advised; all 
depends upon the circumstances and the persons; provided, 
of course, that there is no previous engagement, for it is a 
sin to violate pledged faith.'® Such is the sanctity of the con- 
jugal tie that, in mixed marriages, it is imparted to the pagan 
consort and to the children of the union.*” Christian marriage 
prepares recruits for baptism and candidates for heaven. The 
Apostle puts the crown upon his teaching by these consoling 


words: ‘‘ The woman shall be saved through child-bearing 
2 1 Cor. xi, 3: Kepady 5¢ yuvarnds 6 avnp. 
® 1 Cor. xi, 5-10. 3 1 Cor. xi, 8. Ae y Corext, 02 
® 1 Cor. xi, 7. Sm 6 Os) doe 4 ys Y 7 y Tim. ii, 13-14! 
® ¥ Cor. x1, T1-12. 8 ‘3 Cof. vii, 12, 13. 
10 1 Cor. vii, 11: yuvaixa ph xwptobjva . . . Kat dvdpa yuvaixa pr) adrdvat. 
ate Core vil, 3. 4a: Cor. vii, I. 1377 Cor: vil; 7: 


4 1 Cor. vil, 40. j 

16 The mpeoBvrepos or éxioxoros must be pias yuvatxos avip (having been 
married only once, 1 Tim. iii, 2; Titus i, 6), and the deacon also (1 Tim. iil. ey 
Similarly a widow, officially recognized by the Church, must be évos avdpos 
yur} (1 Tim. v, 9). 


16 | Tim. v, II, 12. 17 y Cor. vil, 14. 


232 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


(Sia rexvoyovias), provided she continue in faith and charity 
and sanctification with modesty.’’! 


IlJ—PreEcepts oF PERSONAL MORALITY 


1. The Three Theological Virtues. 2. Pre-eminence of Charity. 
3. Virtues and Vices. 4. Prayer. 5. Little Virtues. 


1. Faith, hope, and charity are the foundation, the centre, 
and the summit of the Christian life. Faith begins, charity 
completes, and hope is the bond of union between them. 
Paul loves to classify these by themselves and to indicate the 
distance which separates them from the other virtues. He 
exhorts the Thessalonians to put on “the breastplate of 
faith and charity and the helmet of hope,’’? because faith 
increased with charity renders the Christian invulnerable, and 
because hope teaches him to fear nothing and to dare every- 
thing. He praises in them ‘“‘ the work of faith and labour 
and charity and the enduring of hope,’’? because sincere faith 
is active, true charity indefatigable, and supernatural hope 
capable of suffering everything. In contrast to the charismata 
which pass away and whose role is transitory, ‘‘ faith, 
hope, and charity abide.’’* The number of cases in which the 
three virtues follow one another is significant, and it will 
appear still more surprising if one of its synonyms is substi- 
tuted for hope, or if we remember that it is virtually comprised 
in faith and charity, the pair which occur so often in the 
Apostle’s writings. 

* 1 Tim. ii, 15: ewOjcerat Sa rHS TeKvoyovias. 

* 1 Thess. v,8: évSvodpevor Odpaxa miorews Kat aydmns Kal mrepixepadatav 


€Ari8a owrnpias. St Paul’s metaphor is inspired by Is. lix, 17 (évedvcare 
Stxatoovyny ais Odpaxa cal repiebero mepixepadalav awrnplov éni ris Kedadjs), 
but he changes the name of the virtues in order to bring in his trio: faith, 
hope, and charity. In Eph. vi, 14-17 his aim is different; it is necessary 
there to have a complete defensive armour from the helmet to the feet. These 
two texts should be compared with Wisdom v, 19 and Baruch vy, 2. 

* 1 Thess. i, 3: prnyovedovres dudv rod Epyou rijs mlorews Kal rod Kémov 
THs aydrns Kal ths dropovAs TAS éAniSos roo Kupiov jpav *I. X. It is very 
probable that the last words qualify only hope (Bisping, Schafer, Bornemann, 
etc.), which has for its object and stimulant the triumphal return of Christ. 

* 1 Cor. xiii, 13: vor 8€ pever wloris, eAnis, ayarn, Ta Tpia Tabra. 

* Outside of the texts already cited, the three virtues are enumerated 
together in the following passages: Gal. v, 5-6 (€x mlorews @\ni3a dmex- 
Sexoucba . . . mlaris 80 dydans evepyoupern) ; Rom. v, I, 2, 5 (SicatwOevres 


€x mlorews . . . xavywpeba én’ edmidc. . . 7 d€ eAnis od Katatoydver Gre } 
> fol ~ ° ~ 

aydan to} Qeob xrX.); Col. i, 4-5 (dxovcavres THY mloTw bay... Kal THY 
> /, > ° eee . 
ayarnv ... dud rHv €dniSa); Eph. i, 1 5, 18; iii, 17 (compared with 


Col. i, 23); cf. 1 Cor. xiii, 7; Heb. vi, 10-12; x, 22-24.—With vzopovy in- 
stead of €Anis: 2 Thess. i, 3, 4; 1 Tim. vi, 11; 2 Tim. ii, 2 (bytatvovres TH 
miorel, Th dydap, 7H dmouovg).—The pair “faith and charity’: 1 Thess. 
iii, 6; Philem. 5; 1 Tim, i, 14; ii, 15 ; iv, 12; 2 Tim. i, 13 ; ii, 22.—Observe, 
however, that in Gal. v, 5 it is a question of the object of hope (which further 
presupposes subjective hope), and that in Rom. v, 5 it is a question directly 
of the Jove of God (who pours forth in our hearts the virtue of charity). 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 333 


When associated with charity and hope, faith is no longer 
the first movement of the soul’s approach to God and the 
acquisition of justice; it is then a supernatural habit which 
gives to the different manifestations of the Christian life 
their impulse, their direction, and their tone. This character 
of stable faith is much more emphasized in the Pastoral 
Epistles, where the formula ‘‘ in the faith’’ appears stereo- 
typed; but it is by no means absent from the other Epistles. 
The Apostle admonishes the Corinthians to be firm in the 
faith, and to test themselves to see if they are in the faith; 
the Colossians, to persevere in the faith and to strengthen 
themselves in the faith; he rejoices to see the Thessalonians 
anchored in the faith; he himself lives in the faith of the Son 
of God. Evidently in all these examples faith is not a passing 
act but a virtue that abides.* 

In the Greek classics hope was an expectation, more or 
less vain or well founded, of an event, fortunate or unfortu- 
nate. This meaning is foreign to the Bible; here, hope is 
always the certain expectation of a coming good. We fear 
evil, we do not hope for it. Hope has always in view the 
divine promises: salvation, eternal life, the resurrection of 
the dead; it includes the whole matter of faith in so far as it 
concerns us and is to come.? As it must be founded on 
reason, it is the attribute of Christians only. The Gentiles 
have no hope ;* the hope of the godless, being only a deceit- 
ful illusion, will perish ; on the contrary, that of the Christians 
is certain; ‘‘it confoundeth not,’’* because it relies upon 
faith; it is, therefore, for them a never-failing source of 
courage, joy, and inward happiness. Hope and faith mutually 
help each other ; for if faith acts upon hope, hope reacts also 
upon faith; each draws from charity its value and its worth, 
but each of them in turn kindles charity and stimulates it to 
action.> Hope especially, symbolized by the helmet and dis- 
tinguished by ardour, intrepidity, and audacity, is checked 
by no obstacle, terrified by no danger, discouraged by no 
delay: ‘‘ Tribulation worketh constancy, and constancy 
proved virtue, and proved virtue hope.’’® Hope is at the 
same time the beginning and the end of this evolution towards 
the better; for the Christian virtues partially interpenetrate 
and mutually stimulate one another. 


2. Faith, hope, and charity readily keep step together, but 
charity always takes precedence of her two sisters. One 
should read without interruption St Paul’s wonderful chapter 
in its praise which has been justly called the hymn of charity : 


1 See Note V. 2 Heb. xi, I. 
8 Eph. ii, 12; 1 Thess. iv, 13. “ Rom. vy, 5. 
5 x Cor. i, 4-5. : 


* Rom. v, 4. Compare for the idea Jas. i, 3-4. 


334 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Be zealous for the best charésmata; but I will show you a far more 
excellent way. 

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, 
I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And had I the 
gift of prophecy and such faith as to remove mountains, if I have not 
charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to 
feed [the poor], and if I should deliver my body to be burned, if I 
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 

Charity is patient, is kind ; charity envieth not, vaunteth not itself, 
is not puffed up, doth nothing unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not 
provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth with the truth ; excuseth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
al] things, endureth all things. 

Charity never faileth. If [there be] prophecies, they shall vanish 
away ; if tongues, they shall cease ; if knowledge, it shall vanish. For 
we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is 
perfect shall come, that which is in part shall vanish away. When I 
was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a 
child. But when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. 
We see now through a mirror, in reflected images, but then [we shall 
see] face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as 
I am known. 

And now there remain faith, hope and chi.ity, these three ; but the 
greatest of these is charity.? 


This lyrical passage is clearness itself, and any commentary 
would only obscure it. Let us try merely to disengage its 
dominant ideas by grouping them under three headings. 

Charity is the queen of virtues. Charismata are indeed 
Precious gifts and must be estimated at their full value, pre- 
ference being given to the most useful rather than to the 
most brilliant. But there is a way incomparably loftier and 
surer, the royal road of love. Without charity the most 
excellent of charismata are nothing and do no good. The 
gift of tongues is then a useless babble of words; prophecy is 
a passing gleam, which will be eclipsed at the day of the 
beatific vision. Charity alone will never fail. Faith and 
hope, which share with her the privilege of having God for 
a direct object, will disappear in heaven, where the elect see 
instead of believing and can no longer hope for what they 
already possess without the possibility of loss; but charity is 


* 1 Cor. xii, 31-xiii, 13.—The verse xii, 31 serves as a means of transition : 
Aemulamini autem charismata meliora, et adhuc exceilentiorem viam vobis 
demonstro. St Paul has reproached the Corinthians with striving to obtain 
the most unusual and conspicuous charismata. Now he urges them to desire 
the greatest or the best charismata (e/fova or Kpetrrova)—that is to say, the 
most useful, as he has explained. It is better to take the verb {nAovre in 
the imperative ; the indicative, with an interrogation point after the first part 
of the phrase, would give a rather distorted meaning : “ Are you zealous for 
the best charismata? Well, I will show you a more excellent way.” But 
this presupposes that charity is a charisma, which is contrary to the Apostle’s 
language and thought. On the contrary, with the imperative the meaning 
is perfectly natural ; the first part of the phrase is the conclusion of what has 
been said on the subject of charismata ; then Paul shows something more 
excellent and desirable.-—The expression xa6” brepBoAfv has the value of an 
adjective qualifying odds. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 335 


immortal and does not change essentially in nature when 
transformed into glory. 

Charity is the summary of the commandments, for it in- 
cludes an implicit submission to the divine will in all its 
extent. The Master said: ‘‘On these two commandments 
(love of God and of one’s neighbour) depend the whole Law 
and the prophets.’’ The disciple said in his turn: ‘* All the 
other commandments are comprised in one word: Thou 
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself... . Love, therefore, 
is the fulfilling of the Law.’ And again: ‘‘ For all the Law 
is fulfilled in this word: Love thy neighbour as thyself.’’ 
Or, with enigmatical conciseness: ‘‘ The end of the com- 
mandment is charity.’’® 

Charity is the bond of perfection.* This it is which holds 
tightly together, like a sheaf of fragrant flowers, the virtues 
whose entirety constitutes Christian perfection. Or, tovary the 
metaphor, it is keystone of the vault designed to hold together 
all the stones and mouldings of our spiritual structure, which 
without it would crumble. 

St Francs de Sales tells us in his usual graceful style that 
‘‘ charity never enters a heart without also quartering therein 
all her escort of the other virtues.’? The pious Bishop of 
Geneva appears to have drawn his inspiration from St Paul, 
who thus describes the train of the minor virtues which attend 
their sovereign: ‘‘ Charity is patient’’; she possesses that 
tolerant forbearance which the Scriptures describe as the 
peculiar characteristic of the divine Fatherhood.—‘‘ She is 
full of benignity,’’ and practises in all fraternal relations that 


1 Matt. xxii, 40 and Rom. xiii, 9, 10. ' *'Gal.v, 14: 

Peri Wits 5: 

« Col. iii, 14. Super omnia autem haec, charttatem habete, quod est 
vinculum perfectionts. "Eni maar 5€ rovrois viv dydany, 6 €or. ovvdeopos 
rhs TeAedrntos. As the reference has just been to the virtues which were 
to be put on (verse 12) one might be tempted to translate: “‘ Over all these 
(virtues, put on) charity.” Charity would then be like’a large mantle cover- 
ing the other virtues with its folds, or like a broad girdle binding them round 
the Christian. But it is probable that the proper meaning of évdvcace is 
no longer obvious here ; the Vulgate has replaced it by the colourless Aadete. 
In this case, émt mao rovrots will mean ‘ more than all this,’”’ or “in 
preference to all the rest.” 

The principal point is to know to what charity serves as a bond. Is it 
to the other virtues, or to the Christians themselves? The first explanation 
is the most common. Thus Chrysostom says: mdvra éxeiva abry avadiyyet. 
So also Lightfoot, Abbott, etc. Some compare it to the word of the Pythago- 
reans, who make friendship the dond of all the virtues : avvdeqpnos Tagav THY 
dperav. The genitive rijs reAeudrnros would then be objective : charity is shat 
which binds, ties together and unites the virtues, the whole of which constitutes 
perfection. The idea is beautiful, but the expression has something a little 
peculiar in it; one binds, it is true, the parts of a whole, but what is the bond 
of a whole ?—Hence the second explanation keeps its probability. Charity 
is thus the powerful bond that unites Christians to one another. The genitive 
ris tehedrnTos would then be a genitive of quality (a perfect bond); or a 
genitive of apposition (a bond consisting in perfection); or, perhaps, even a 
possessive genitive (a bond for the use of perfection, of the perfect). 


336 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


amiable gentleness the charm of which the Apostle tells us.— 
‘“‘ Charity is not envious,’’ because she is unpretentious, and 
because the happiness and success of others cannot offend 
her.—‘' Charity does not blow her own trumpet ’’; she does 
not imitate the Pharisees who proclaim their services or their 
charities with the sound of a trumpet.—‘‘ She is not puffed 
up with pride,’’ because she pays less attention to the good 
that she does than to that which she is powerless to do.— 
“‘ She doth nothing unseemly ’’ in her language or her atti- 
tude, carefully avoiding everything that is of a nature to 
wound or scandalize her neighbour.—‘‘ She seeketh not her 
own advantage,’’ for she needs to forget herself in order to 
live, and selfishness would kill her.—‘‘ She is not irritated,’’ 
whether she is misunderstood or calumniated, so far is she 
above terrestrial cares.—‘‘ She thinketh no evil’’ of incon- 
siderate behaviour in others.—‘‘ She rejoiceth not in 
iniquity,’’ even when it is successful and profitable.-—‘‘ On 
the contrary, she rejoiceth with the truth,’’ and applauds its 
triumph.—‘‘ She excuseth all things,’’ leaving to God, the 
searcher of hearts, the care of judging man’s secret inten- 
tions.—** She believeth all things ’’ that are told her, in good 
faith and simplicity.x—‘‘ She hopeth all things’’ that are 
promised her, without suspicion or distrust.—‘‘ She endureth 
all things,’’ even indifference and ingratitude.} 


* 1 Cor. xiii, 4-7: 


‘H aydan paxpobupe?, (a) charttas patiens est, 
xPnoreverat 1 dyd7n, (6) dentgna est, 

ov Cndoi, (¢) charttas non aemulatur, 

) ay, ov mEpmepeveras, (2) non agit perperam, 

ov guatotrat, (¢) non inflatur, 

ovK doynpove, ({) non est ambitiosa, 

ov Cnret ra éavris, &) non quaertt quae sua sunt, 
ov mapofuverat, (4) non trritatur, 

od Aoyilerat 76 Kakdr, (t) non cogitat malum, 

ov xalpe éxi 77 adtxia, (j) non gaudet super tniquttate, 
ovyxatpet 5é 77 adnBelgs (4) congaudet autem veritats, 
mavTa oTéyet, (1) omnia suffert, 

MaGVTA TLOTEVEL, (m) omnia creatt, 

mavra €dmller, (n) omnia sperat, 

mavra, Uropevet. (0) omnia sustinet. 


Some terms require a word of explanation : (4) xypnorevecGat is to practise 
the Pauline virtue of xpnordrns (benignitas).—(d) Ilepmepedteobat is to be 
népmepos, ‘‘a boaster” or ‘a sycophant”’; but the second meaning is less 
appropriate here on account of the nearness of od duatodrar.—(f ) "Aoxnpoveiv 
is to have something shocking and offensive for others in one’s external 
appearance ;—(z) Aoyilec@at rd xaxdv could signify “to attribute bad con- 
duct to others in order to avenge oneself when a chance occurs”; but it is 
better to translate it, “‘to think ill of something ”’—that is, to assume its 
intention was evil—{7 and k) The word d8txla does not denote an injustice 
done to a neighbour, and the word xaipe: does not express the sentiment 
of pleasure which this sight awakens in the jealous. The idea is a more 
general one : “‘ Charity detests all injustice, but on the contrary rejoices at 
the triumph of the truth” (cvyyaipe, she rejoices with the truth which 
triumphs).—(/) 2réyew may mean “ to support”; but as this idea is ex- 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 337 


We will not try to classify these fifteen virtues, the com- 
panions of charity. By seeking to find in them a strict order, 
our exegesis would be sacrificed to a system. Paul was able 
to prolong or shorten his list as he liked, and the enumeration 
is made rather as an example than as an effort to exhaust the 
subject. 


3. The unequalled rank assigned to charity has the natural 
effect of throwing the other moral virtues rather into the 
shade. Their lack of prominence is due, however, to another 
cause. As they were included in the apostolic catechetical 
teaching and belonged consequently to the rudiments of the 
faith, the sacred writers had scarcely any reason for referring 
to them again. When Paul sees fit to allude to them, his 
lists of virtues and vices are neither complete nor methodical, 
and they teach us but little. Let us mention merely the 
characteristic traits of the Pauline vocabulary; they are 
humility and goodness among the virtues, and covetousness 
and dissension among the vices. 

Humility is a specifically Christian virtue, of which the 
pagans do not seem to have had any idea. For them 
‘humble’? (ramedvs) was synonymous with “low, vile, 
abject, servile, and ignoble.’’* Among the Hebrews it was 
entirely different. The man who was oppressed and con- 
scious of his nothingness and misery, accepted the trial with 
patience as a means of expiation, put his hope in God and 
had for his persecutors neither hatred nor ill will, was the 
ideal of the just man. He was designated by a word which 
is translated either by ‘‘ poor,’’ ‘‘ meek,’’ or ‘‘ humble.”’ 
When Jesus Christ said of himself: *‘ I am meek and lowly 
- of heart,’’ the Jews who heard him had no difficulty in com- 
prehending him.? Humility and gentleness are the face and 
the reverse of the same virtue: humility before God, gentle- 
ness towards men. St Paul is fond of uniting them : he wishes 
that ‘“‘each with all humility should esteem others better 
than himself,’’ and he urgently recommends his converts to be 
‘* full of gentleness towards all men,’’? Thus do these twin 


iieces fee ford ee 


pressed later (0), it is better to adhere to the classical idea of “‘ passing over 
in silence, or excusing.””—(m and ) These two phrases are best understood 
by referring them to our neighbour rather than to God. Paul does not mean 
that charity nourishes faith and hope in a theological sense, but that she is 
without mistrust and suspicion. 

1 Cf. Trench, Synonyms of the N.T., xiiii. 

4 Matt. xi, 29: dre mpais elyt cal ramewos TH Kapdig. Originally distinct 
in meaning and etymology, the two adjectives iY and 3) became subse- 
quently synonyms, and are translated indifferently by apais or tazewwds. 
Cf. Cremer, W. brterbuch, sub vace. 

3 The word rarewodpoatvn (Eph. iv, 2; Phil. ii, 3 ; Col. ii, 18, 23 3 ili, 12; 
Acts xx, 19, Paul’s speech) is elsewhere met with only in 1 Pet. v, 5. The 
word mpatrns (1 Cor. iv, 21; 2 Cor. x, 1; Gal. v, 23; vi, 1; Eph. iv, 2; 

Il. 22 


338 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


virtues, one of which was profoundly despised and the other 
scarcely known by the ancient world, become the test of the 
true Christian. 

Goodness is no less characteristic of Paul’s code of morality. 
It is expressed by two words, peculiar to him alone, one 
of which (dyawovvn) is really ‘‘ goodness,’ the other 
(xenotorns) ‘‘ kindness’’ or ‘‘ mildness.”’! St Jerome has 
well caught the shade of difference in meaning: ‘‘ Kindness 
is a sweet, amiable, tranquil virtue, of gentle speech, affable 
manners, and a happy mixture of all good qualities. Good- 
ness is very like it, for it also seeks to give pleasure; but it 
is distinguished from it by the fact that it is less prepossess- 
ing and of a severer aspect, and also, although prompt to 
do good and render a service, lacks that urbanity and suavity 
which win all hearts.’’2 Goodness characterizes more the 
foundation, benignity more the form of devotion. Kind- 
ness includes goodness, but it adds to it something which 
doubles its value. One can say without pleonasm ‘the 
kindness of goodness,’”’ but not ‘‘ the goodness of kindness.”’ 
Kindness is the special prerogative of God ; and it is also the 
most easily recognizable imprint of the Creator on his 
creatures. However, neither Christian goodness nor Christian 
kindness degenerate into easy-going complaisance and weak- 
ness, as is often the case in the works of secular writers. 

Of all the vices the most hateful to Paul is the spirit of 
discord. He met with it almost at the commencement of his 
career, threatening to fetter his ministry and to destroy his 
work. He found it again at the end of his course, always 
disturbing, disquieting, and jealous. He condemns it under 
many names, some of which really belong to it, such as dis- 
putes, dissensions, factions, animosity, envy, and a love of 
ee ee ee eee 
Col. iii, 12 ; 2 Tim. ii, 25 ; Titus ili, 2) is also found in James i, 21 5 Lliskag 
I Pet. iii, 15. St Paul unites the two nouns in Eph. iv, 2; Col. iii, 12. He 
also uses mpairala (1 Tim. vi, 11).—St Bernard defines humility thus: 
Virtus qua guts ex verissima sut cogntitione stbi ipst utlesctt, St Chrysostom 
says less aptly that to be humble is érav mus péyas av éavrév ramewot. 
He was no doubt thinking of the humility of Christ. St Basil calls humility 
(Consttt. mon., 16) yaloguddktov dperdv. Trench, Joc. ctt., establishes the 
synonymy thus: ‘‘ Ipavrns, or meekness, is more than mere gentleness of 
manner, if indeed the Christian grace of meekness of spirit must rest on 
deeper foundations than its own: on those namely which razewod¢poovrn has 
laid for it, and can only subsist while it continues to rest on these. It isa 
grace in advance of razewodpoovvn, not as more precious than it, but as 
presupposing it, and as being unable to exist without it.” 

* The word dyabwovvn (goodness) is exclusively Pauline (Rom. XV, 14; 
Gal. v, 22 ; Eph. v,9; 2 Thess. i, 1 1); xpnordérns (kindness) also (Rom. ii, ae 
ili, 12 ; xi, 22; 2 Cor. vi, 6; Gal. v, 22; Eph. ii, 7 ; Col. iii, 12 ; Titus iii, 4), 
as well as xypnorevecGat (1 Cor. xiii, 4) and xpnotoAoyta (Rom. xvi, 18). 

* Comment. in Galat., v, 22. Cf. St Basil (Regul. brev. tract., 214): 
IDarvrépay olwat elvar rip xpyordrnra eis evepyeclav tav Srws SntoToty 
éndcoudvww ratrns, cuvnypérny 83 KaMov rv dyawovvnv xal rots Tis 8ixato- 
avyns Adyous &v rails edepyeotats ovyxpwpéerny. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 339 


schisms and of sects.’ He expressly commands Titus to shun 
the heretic—that is, the fomenter of troubles and divisions. 
It might be sometimes thought that his moral code consists 
in Causing unity, good understanding, harmony and peace to 
prevail among his converts. 

Another vice, which is quite prominent in Paul’s writings 
(wAcovetia, weovextys) and characteristic of his vocabulary, 
is hard to define.2 The Vulgate always translates it by 
avaritia; but it is rather carnal desire than cupidity. In 
fact, this vice is almost always associated with sins of im- 
purity, and it is not any too clear what avarice has to do in 
this company. Moreover, it is presented as the dominant 
mark of paganism and is even identified once with idolatry ; 
now avarice does not seem to have been the particular vice 
of the pagans, while idolatry and fornication or impurity 
were synonyms. Finally, the command given to the 
Ephesians not to speak of it: Fornicatio et omnis immun- 


* The following words are Pauline: épts (dispute), Rom. i,.29; xiii, 13 ; 
t°Cor. 4, 11 ; i1,33°2 Cor. xii, 20; Gal. v, 20; Phil’i, 15 ;-1 Tim. vi, 4; 
Titus iii, 9 ;—8dtyooracla (dissension), Rom. xvi, 17; Gal. v, 20 ;—épi8ia 
(discord), Rom. ii, 8; 2 Cor. xii, 20; Gal. v, 20; Phil. i, 17; ii, 3 (except 
James ili, 14, 16). 

* The verb zAeovexreiv, peculiar to Paul (2 Cor. ii, 11; vii, 2; xii, 17-18 ; 
1 Thess. iv, 6), is rendered in the Vulgate by czrcumventre ; mAeovexrns, also 
peculiar to Paul (1 Cor. v, 10, 11; vi, 10; Eph. v, 5), is rendered by avarus ; 
mAeovetiain St Paul (Rom. i, 29; 2 Cor. ix, 5; Eph. iv, 19; v, 3; Col. iii, 5 ; 1 
Thess. ii, 5), and elsewhere (Mark vii, 22 ; Luke xii, 15; 2 Pet. ii, 3, 14) is 
rendered by avaritia. Now, in many of these texts, the idea of avarice is 
difficult to justify: (2) Eph. v, 3 (Forntcatio et omnis immundttia aut avaritia 
mec nominetur tn vobis) is much better translated by carnal concuptscence 
than by avarice, first because of the adjoining words, and then because of 
the singular verb and the word aut (cal dxafapoia raca % mAcovegia), which 
seems to mean that it is a question here of the same vice under different 
names, and finally because it is not clear why it would be objectionable to 
mention avarice by name.—(d) Nor is it easy to see what connection there can 
be between avarice and idolatry: Col. iii, 5 (kal tiv mdeovetiav, aris eorlv 
eiSwAodarpeia) ; Eph. v, 5 (rAeovexrns, os €or eidwAoddrpys) ; while the Bible 
and history agree in showing us the close connections between idolatry and 
the carnal passions.—{c) The word zAeove€ia is usually associated with sins of 
impurity: Col. iii, 5; Eph. v, 3; v, 5; Rom. i, 29; 1 Cor. v, 10-11; 2 Pet. 
ii, 14; Mark, vii, 21 (the true order is xAomal, Povor, poryetat, mAcovetiat). 

In the Decalogue the prohibition to covet thy netghbour’s wealth and to 
desire his wife is expressed by the same verb: Ex. xx, 11 (Vom concuptsces 
domum proximt tut, nec destderabts uxorem ejus, non anctllam, non bovem, 
non astnum, nec omnia quae tlitus sunt ; in Greek it is the same verb émiBupeiv, 
in Hebrew also 4amad). Although cupidity and covetousness were differ- 
entiated at an early age (in Deut. v, 8 the verbs differ), they were able to con- 
tinue being expressed by the same word. Perhaps this remark explains 
1 Thess. iv, 6 (76 yt) drrepBaivery Kal wAeovenretvy ev TH mpdypate Tov adeApov 
‘avroé). mAeovexretvy riva means usually “to prejudice, to wrong some- 
one by cupidity or avarice by depriving him of his due”; can it not 
signify ‘‘ to wrong someone by unlawful desire” in deceiving him in the 
matter (€v 7 mpdypartt) of marriage? This meaning agrees very well with 
the preceding verse, where the reference is to the chaste use of marriage, and 
it also agrees well with the reason given in the following verse (non enim 
vocavit nos Deus tn tmmundttiam). It is not surprising, therefore, that 
St Jerome, Estius, and others adopted it. 


340 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


ditia aut avaritia nec nominetur in vobts, is much better trans- 
lated by carnal desire. We must remember that in the primi- 
tive moral code, before the varieties of evil desires had been 
differentiated, the same word signified at once an impure 
desire and cupidity or avarice. The special usage of St Paul 
brings us back to those distant beginnings : such is the most 
natural solution of a linguistic problem which engrosses the 
attention of exegetes. 


4. What has gone before is sufficient to show what an 
abyss separates the moral code of Paul from that of the 
Stoics. As has been well said: ‘‘ Stoicism is the result of 
despair ’’: despair in religion in view of the decadent and 
absurd mythologies ; despair in politics, when the Macedonian 
conquest had dispelled all men’s dreams of independence ; 
despair in philosophy, at the sight of all its impotent and con- 
tradictory systems.! But Christianity is the religion of hope, 
and Paul’s moral code is the code of love. There is no common 
standard of measurement between these heights. As almost 
all the Stoics were of Eastern origin, and as many of them 
had established themselves in Tarsus or in Cilicia, some have 
suspected the teacher of the Gentiles of having come under 
their influence ; and, indeed, by dint of laboriously examining 
the writings of Epictetus and Seneca, we may discover therein 
a certain number of maxims which are quite similar in tone 
and expression to those of Paul. But these resemblances 
must not deceive us; they are external and superficial. We 

‘recognize at first the complete absence of the Stoic voca- 
bulary; but what especially differentiates the teachings is 
their spirit. The Stoics considered it supremely ridiculous 
to ask God for virtue and to honour him for it ; now nothing 
is more characteristic of Paul’s moral teaching than prayer 
and thanksgiving. 

His injunctions in this respect border on hyperbole: *‘ Pray 
without ceasing; give thanks in all things.—In everything by 
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions 
be made known to God.—Whatsoever you say or do, do all 
in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to 
God the Father.—Make at all times in the spirit all prayers 
and supplications.’’? He himself sets the example. He writes 
to the new Christians : ‘‘ We pray always for you with thanks- 
giving. .. . We cease not to pray for you.’’* The Acts 

1 Lightfoot, Eprstle to the Philippians, pp. 271, 272; Appendix, St Paul 
and Seneca, pp. 270-333. See zdzd., p. 299, an erudite note on the country 
of all the Stoicsof renown. R. Bultmann (Der Stzl der Paulinischen Predigt 
und die Kynisch-Stoische Diatribe, Gottingen, 1910) has tried to prove how 
much St Paul owes to the school of Stoics and Cynics in all that pertains 
to methods of argumentation. The proof has, in our opinion, nothing 
convincing, but the idea should be taken into consideration. 

2 Thess. v, 17 ; Phil. iv, 6 ; Eph. vi, 18. 

® 1 Thess. i, 2 ; Col. i, 9, etc 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 341 


reveal him to us as praying in all the serious circumstances of 
his life; at the moment when he goes to Ananias to be 
baptized by him,! in the Temple after his conversion,” before 
receiving the laying on of hands,* when he appoints elders 
for the new churches,‘ in the prison at Philippi,® at Miletus 
before the assembled elders,* when saying farewell to the 
Christians of Tyre,’ after his miracle at Mitylene,’ and at 
the Three Taverns on the road to Rome.® He prays for 
his disciples’® and for the Jews;! he prays also for him- 
self ;? he exhorts the faithful to pray frequently! especially 
for him,** and relies upon their prayers.45 We know that, 
like the pious Jews of his time, he was accustomed to pray 
before meals.1® 

His Epistles also, interlarded with doxologies, generally 
begin with an act of thanksgiving which sometimes continues 
through the whole Epistle of which it forms the frame. His 
final wish again almost always finds its expression in a form 
of prayer. 

If we do not insist further on this point, it is because there 
is in it nothing peculiar ; for the practice of frequent prayer is 
a habit formed by St Paul when a devotee of Pharisaism. All 
devout Pharisees loved to adorn their writings and discourses 
with prayers and doxologies. St Paul scarcely distinguishes 
himself from them except by the earnestness of his supplica- 
tions and by the fact, alréady pointed out elsewhere, that in 
his invocations he associates the Son with the Father and 
makes the Holy Spirit the principal master and agent of 
Christian prayer. 


5. Let us mention, in closing, three modest virtues very 
dear to the Apostle: work, order, and decorum. He no 
sooner arrived in a new mission than he installed himself in 
one of those narrow shops which lined the market-place; 
there he took up his trade of weaver, in order to provide for 
his needs, to give a good example to all and to preserve his 
independence. To the elders of Ephesus, who had come to 
Miletus to receive his farewells, he showed with pride his 
wrinkled hands, used to hard work day and night.!7_ To the 
Thessalonians, obsessed with the vision of the approaching 
end of the world, he recalled emphatically the law of labour : 


* Acts-ix, 11. 2 Acts xxii, 17. SV Acts xtit,-2, 

*- Acts xiv, 23. * Acts xvi, 25. * Acts xx, 36. 

¥_ Acts xxi,.5; ® Acts xxviii, 8. ® Acts xxviii, 15. 
© Rom. i, 9, 10 5 2 Cor. xiii, 7 ; Eph. iii, 14 ; Phil. i, 3, 9 ; Col. i, 3. 

POOR Gin. 1: 18 2 Cor. xii, 8 ; 1 Thess. iii, 10. 


3 Rom. xii, 13; 1 Cor. vii, 5; xi, 5-13; xiv, 13; Phil. iv, 6; Col. iv, 2; 
1 Tim. il, I-4. 

%* Rom. xv, 30-32 ; 2 Cor. i, 11 ;7Eph. vi, 18 ;" Col. iv, 3, 18. 2 Thess. 
ili, 1-2. 

18 Phil. i, 19 ; Philem. 22. ** Acts xxvii, 35. 

47 Acts xx, 34. 


342 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


‘© We were not idle among you, and we have not eaten any 
man’s bread for nothing.’ His maxim was that whoever 
would not work should not eat.? Wealth which protects 
one from want, is not an excuse for idleness. Paul wishes 
that everyone should work in order to escape a want of 
occupation and—if a more Christian motive is needed—in 
order to dispense charity more generously. Labour in it- 
self is a good work, but charity increases its value ten-fold. 

Order was no less dear to the heart of the Apostle and he 
was a living example of it. He prescribed that in the religious 
assemblies all should be done in order.* Nothing pleased him 
so much as the charm of fair order in a young church. He 
required that the idle members who troubled and scandalized 
the others should be fraternally reproved and, in case of 
backsliding, punished with a sort of kindly excommunica- 
tion, capable of bringing them back to duty.° 

Decorum was in his eyes the result of order and work : 
‘‘ Let everything be done decently,’’ he often said. ‘‘ Behave 
with decorum, as in the full day of Gospel light. Act properly 
in your relations with strangers "’ to our faith.’ The convert 
must not be an exile from the world; he may accept the in- 
vitations of unbelievers, but everywhere he must leave an 
influence unto edification.® Merely not to be a stumbling- 
block to Jews and Greeks?® is too little; the Christian in his 
deportment and his entire conduct must convey to others a 
high idea of his faith and do honour to the Gospel.*° Thus 
exalted, little virtues become great, and they are called devo- | 
tion and apostolate. 

St Paul’s code of morals is full of contrasts. With incom- 
parable ease he associates the most sublime mysticism with 
the most practical asceticism. While his eyes explore the 
depths of space, his feet never lose contact with the earth. 
Nothing is above, and nothing is beneath him. At the 
moment when he declares himself crucified to the world and 
living from the very life of Christ, he is able to address to his 
children delightful words of kindliness and grace andto descend 
to the most minute instructions about the veiling of women, 
good order in the assemblies, the duty of manual labour and 
the care of a weak stomach. Thus his spirituality offers to 
the humblest hearts a nourishment which is always savoury 
and to noble souls an inexhaustible mine of profound medita~ 
tions. 

1 2 Thess. iil, 5. * 2 Thess. iii, 10. 3 Eph. iv, 28, 29. 

« y Cor. xiv, 40. 5 Col. il, 5. 

® y Thess. v, 14; 2 Thess. iii, 6-11. 

7 1 Cor. xiv, 40; Rom. xiii, 13 ; 1 Thess. iv, 12 ; Col. iv, 5. 

$Pr' Cor, x127 25. ® 1 Cor. x, 32. 10 Titus ii, 10. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 343 


IV—CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 


1. The Way of the Counsels. 2. The Imitation of Jesus Christ. 
3. Christian Asceticism. 4. The Eucharist, the Seal of Perfection. 


1. The reader must have perceived that Paul’s exhortation 
goes far beyond strict obligation and is often an ideal rather 
than an imperative rule. How could it be otherwise? 
When he says to the faithful: ‘‘ Have the same mind that 
was in Christ Jesus,’’ he opens wide the door of the evan- 
gelical counsels. Ever since the Si vis perfectus esse of the 
divine Master was heard, a multitude of generous souls have 
voluntarily undertaken to tread this path and the apostles 
urge them thither, without, however, imposing it on them as 
a rigorous duty. At the moment when St Paul highly praises 
virginity and recommends the continence which he himself 
professes, he is very careful to say that it is a gift of God and 
that it demands a special call of grace; but this grace is 
generously offered and it is man’s part to respond to it. 
Since our soul is a canvas upon which the living image of 
Jesus should be depicted, there will necessarily be some traits 
offered for our imitation which are not imposed upon our 
consciences ; to pay one’s debts is justice ; to render more than 
one’s due is generosity or gratitude; to give all without 
counting, is love. 

Protestants must take their stand in regard to these things, 
and some do it with a fairly good grace. One of them 
writes, concerning the advice about virginity, which had just 
been discussed: ‘‘ Christian celibacy does not deserve to be 
despised ; it is, or can be, worthy of admiration; under its 
best aspect, it is clearly preferable to marriage. ... Pro- 
testants do not like to hear this assertion, but it is necessary 
to bow to facts, and it is a fact that St Paul encourages 
continence; and the Protestant himself can, if he wishes, 
discover reasons for sympathizing with Paul’s teaching.’’* 
The Catholic, on the other hand, finds Paul’s doctrine quite 
natural, for to him it is a direct echo of the teaching of Jesus. : 

Perfection is a career that has no limits. To whatever 
degree the Christian has attained, he can always aspire to 
rise higher, and it is the task of the preacher to stimulate him 
to this noble effort: ‘‘ We preach Christ, admonishing and 
teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present (to 
God) every man perfect in Christ.” But life will be ended 


1 R. Mackintosh, ‘“ Marriage Problems at Corinth,” in? the Zxfosttor, 
“th series, vol. iv (1907), p. 350. 

* Matt. xix, 12; xix, 21. But zon omnes capiunt verbum tstud. 

2 Col. i, 28: ut exhibeamus omnem hominem perfectum (rédevcov) 1 
Christo. Tédews in’St Paul has its ordinary meaning: “ finished, accom- 
plished, lacking nothing suitable to its nature ” (Rom. xii, 2). To TéA€Lov 
(1 Cor. xiii, 10) denotes the perfection of the future life, in contrast to the 
imperfection of the present life. But often, as in the classics, réAetos in- 


344 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


before the aim is fully realized, for the standard proposed 
to the Christian as a member of the mystical body is the per- 
fection of the Head, Jesus Christ, and it is evident that he 
will never come near that. 


2. Some have wrongly claimed that St Paul, unlike the 
Evangelists, does not present the historical Christ for our 
imitation—that is to say, the person of Jesus Christ con- 
sidered during his mortal life. No doubt there are in the 
earthly life of Jesus many traits, such as his miracles and his 
manifestations of divinity, which cannot be imitated. Where 
he can be followed, and even urges us expressly to imitate 
him, is when he lowers and effaces himself, when he kneels 
before his disciples to wash their feet, when he accepts in- 
sults and outrages, and when he takes upon himself the 
cross through love of us.! This is also the model that St 
Paul presents to us. In order to induce us to please others 
‘“unto good, to edification,’’ he quotes the example of Christ, 
‘‘ who pleased not himself.’’? To teach us the merit and the 
value of giving alms, of self-abnegation and of obedience, he 
reminds us that Christ voluntarily exchanged the riches of 
heaven for the poverty of earth, that he made himself of no 
value by assuming a body like our own, and pushed the 
heroism of obedience even to the death of the cross.°® 

If, however, the mortal life of Jesus plays a rather limited 
role in Paul’s moral as well as his theological teaching, it ts 
because the Apostle loves to consider Jesus Christ as he is 
at present in his glorified life; and he not only exhorts us to 
imitate him and to model ourselves after him, but to trans- 
form ourselves into him. He invites us to put on Christ, to 
fill ourselves with the thoughts of Christ and to live from the 
life of Christ : ‘‘ I live, yet now not I, but Jesus Christ liveth 
in me.’’* Why speak of imitation, when the Apostle aims at 
mystical identity ? 

It is true also that in giving us Jesus Christ as a model, 


ee EEE EE UEEEEESEEESSEESES ES USIERST nnn NEES 


dicates the maturity of age as contrasted with infancy (Eph. iv, 13); it 
then forms an antithesis to vfms (1 Cor. ii, 6). Let us observe that here 
on earth perfection is only relative, since it is always susceptible of growth 
(1 Cor. xiv, 20; Phil. ili, 15). 

1 John xiii, 15 ; Matt. xvi, 24; 1 Pet. ii, 21 ; cf. Matt. x, 24 : xi, 29, etc. 

2 Rom. xv, 3: Kal yap (etenim) 6 Xpiords oby EavrG npecev. 

3 2 Cor. viii, 9 ; Phil. ii, 5-11 ; cf. Heb. xii, 2. 

“ Gal. ii, 20. To put on Christ (Rom. xiii, 14; Gal. iii, 27), to be trans- 
formed into his image (2 Cor. iii, 18), to grow in him (Eph. iv, 5), to live in 
him (Rom. vi, 11), etc., are only different expressions of the same thing. It is 
less the direct imitation of Jesus than the effort to assimilate to ourselves 
always more and more the divine nourishment of grace which makes the 
Christian another Christ. St Paul is not afraid to propose to us Jesus Christ 
as a model in his divine pre-existence (2 Cor. viii, 9; Phil. ii, 5-7). Why 
should he not do so, since he exhorts us to imitate God (Eph. v, 1: yiveoe odv 
ptpnrat rob Qeod)? 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 345 


Paul likes to interpose himself between Christ and us, as a 
living image of the Master. Eight or nine times in his 
Epistles this text recurs in similar forms: ‘‘ Imitate me, as I 
imitate Christ.’’! This is the shortest and most efficacious 
example of his teachings. But the whole life of St Paul was 
a perpetual system of morals in action. What is curious in 
this silent preaching is that it was a carefully thought out 
procedure and an intentional complement of his oral teach- 
ing. There was in it neither ostentation nor vainglory, but 
that paternal condescension which can accommodate itself to 
weakness and, in order better to instruct, address the eyes, 
the intelligence and the heart in turn. He said to the Thessa- 
lonians: ‘* Yourselves know how you ought to imitate us. 
For we were not disorderly among you. Neither did we eat 
any man’s bread for nothing, but in labour and in toil we 
worked night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any 
of you. Not as if we had not power, but that we might give 
ourselves a pattern unto you, to imitate us.’’? The language 
of the preachers of the Faith is indeed eloquent when their 
conduct lends such support to their teaching. 

The imitation of Christ opens limitless horizons to perfec- 
tion. It is the death of selfishness and self-seeking. Here 
are some of the maxims which it suggests to St Paul: ‘‘ Let 
none consider his own advantage, but that of others.— 
Rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that 
weep.—Bear the infirmities of others and let everyone of you 
try to please his neighbour unto good, to edification.—Re- 
member... that it is more blessed to give than to receive.’’* 
It is in the Epistle to the Romans that Paul advances the 
theory of this voluntary renunciation for the sake of charity. 
In Rome there were over-scrupulous persons who abstained 
from certain foods and drinks and made distinctions between 
the different days of the year, the month or the week. These 
timorous souls did not form a definite group and had no 
established system, but, like all scrupulous people, were 
slaves to their own vain apprehensions and unreasonable 
aversions. They did not try to impose their ideas upon 


2 1 Cor. xi, 1 (utpnral pov yiveoBe nabs xdyw Xptorot). This counsel 
is a continuation of 1 Cor. x, 32, 33, and ‘the division of the chapters is not a 
happy one. The other passages in which the Apostle exhorts the faithful 
to imitate him or praises them for having done so, are: 1 Cor. iv, 16 (wtpnrat 
pov yiveobe—the addition stcut et ego Christi of the Vulgate is not in the text) ; 
vii‘ 7 (volo omnes vos esse sicut metpsum) ; vil, 8 (Lonum est tllts st stc per- 
maneant sicut et ego); Phil. iii, 17 (Be ye al] followers of me [ovpptpnral 
pov yiveobe], and observe them who walk so as you have our model 
[rUmov]) ; iv, 9 (quae et didictstis, et accepistis, et audtstis et vidistts in me, 
haec agite) ; 2 Thess. iii, 7-10 (see below) ; 1 Tim. 1, 16; 2 Tim. i, 13 (these 
last two are less striking). Compare, too, the remark of St Paul to the 
Elders of Ephesus (Acts xx, 35). 

2 2 Thess. ili, 7-10: [pst scrtes gquemadmodum oportet imttari nos, etc; 

*Phil. ii, 1 ; 1 Cor. x, 24; Rem. xii, 1§ ; xv, 2 ; Acts xx, 35. 


346 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


others in the form of a doctrine, but ‘‘ weak in the faith,”’ 
they were above all weak in character, and were consequently 
exposed to the influence of example, even in actions which had 
wounded their badly instructed consciences. Were they, un- 
consciously, under the influence of Judaism? It is possible 
after all, although they seem to have been rather led astray 
by an ascetic and unwise ideal, although in itself worthy of 
respect.1 In any case they were not aggressive Judaizers, like 
those in Antioch, Jerusalem, and Galatia, nor Manichean 
dogmatizers like those of Colosse. Otherwise the Apostle, so 
prompt to anathematize all the advocates of false doctrines, 
would not treat them with so much mildness and circumspec- 
tion. He wishes the strong—that is to say, the enlightened 
Christians—to support the weak, who were subject to scruples, 
without even troubling them with sterile discussions ; to ab- 
stain from condemning and judging them; much more, to 
avoid shocking and saddening them by a mode of conduct 
contrary to their own. The maintenance of peace and unity 
is well worth these sacrifices: ‘‘ It is good [for thee] not to 
eat flesh and not to drink wine nor anything whereby thy 
brother is offended, or scandalized, or made weak. . . = 
Wherefore if meat scandalize my brother, I will never eat 
flesh, lest I should scandalize my brother.’’? 


3. Whoever wishes to walk in the footsteps of Jesus must 
be prepared for all sacrifices. See Paul, his faithful imitator. 
As a herald of the Gospel, he could live of the Gospel, but, as 
an Apostle to the Corinthians, he ought to be maintained by 
them. The soldier is fed by his commander and the workman 
by his employer ; and it is to make us understand this truth of 
common sense that Moses forbids men to muzzle the ox that 
treadeth out the corn.‘ Yet Paul never made use of this right. 
He takes pains, as a handworker, not to be a burden on any 
one. He makes it his glory and his duty to preach the word 
of God without pay ‘‘ in order to put no obstacle in the way of 
the [spread of the] Gospel.’’* Inspired by this aim, he 
accepts in advance all renunciations : ‘Free as to all, I 
made myself the servant of all that I might gain the more.... 
I became all things to all men, that I might save at least | 
some.’’®. It is not zeal alone that impels him ; he obeys a still 
nobler motive. 


Know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one 
receiveth the prize? So run that you may obtain. 

And everyone that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all 
things. And they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, 
but we an incorruptible one. 

Ot ee 
1 Rom. xiv, I-xv, 4. 2 Rom. xiv, 21. 
3 1 Cor. vill, 13 * 1 Cor. ix, I-15. 
5 1 Cor. ix, 12. * 1 Cor. ix, 19-22. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 347 


i therefore, so run, not as at an uncertainty ; I so fight, not as one 
beating the air. But I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, 
lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become 
a castaway.’ 


We know how long and severe the preparation for the 
athletic contests was among the ancients. For ten months 
or more a minute and tyrannical rule determined for the 
candidate the hours and duration of his exercises, his meals, 
and his sleep, which he took on a couch too hard for his body 
to leave an impression on it. He had to harden himself 
against hunger, cold and heat, the sun and dust, fatigue and 
the inclemencies of the weather. Not only were the pleasures 
of the table and of love severely prohibited, but he was for- 
bidden to drink wine, because it heats the blood, while cool 
drinks were excluded under the pretext that they are debili- 
tating. And all that for the chance of receiving a leafy 
crown which was to ornament the head of the fortunate 
victor. 

St Paul, comparing the present life to an arena, likens him- 
self to a competitor who is contending for the prizes offered 
for running and pugilism. Like the runner in the stadium, 
he keeps his gaze fixed on the goal which he does not lose 
sight of for a moment; like the pugilist, he strikes terrible 
blows at his adversary, who is none other than himself. In 
order to comprehend the frightful realism of his words, one 
must have stood before those antique statues which repre- 
sent the pugilist standing, with bruised ear, swollen eye, 
hanging lip, broken teeth, and his entire face dotted with 
bloody protuberances. When one of the fighters, panting 
and half dead, lay on the ground, his rival planted his knee 


1 1 Cor. ix, 24-27. All the terms of this passage are metaphorical and 
are borrowed from the games of the arena. Verses. 24-25 contain the pre- 
sentation of the allegory, and verses 26-27 its application. In the presenta- 
tion we note the place of the contest, the stadium (orddtov) ; the rzval com- 
petitors (6 dywvilopevos), and in particular the runners (tpéxovres) ; the 
training, which consists above all in a severe abstinence (mdvra éyxpateverat) ; 
the victory, which is awarded the one who first touches the goal and secures 
the palm (xataAapPdvewv) ; the crown (orépavos) of parsley or pine, destined 
to adorn the brow of the victor; and the przze (BpaBetov), in cash or in 
kind, which often supplements the crown.—In the application, Paul com- 
pares himself by turns to a runner and to a pugilist : as a runner, he looks 
steadfastly at the goal, never losing sight of it for a moment ; as a pugilist, 
he is careful not to beat the air but to hit his adversary, who in this case is 
none other than himself. The blows which he delivers are described by a 
word of singular force: the verb drwmalew denotes literally ‘‘ to bruise the 
face,” to give it vid contusions (snumov). I think that dovAaywyeiv must 
be explained in harmony with the preceding metaphors : “‘ to throw upon the 
ground, to keep down, to hold at one’s feet like a slave.” For the same 
reason xnpvocew, which could be translated ‘‘ to preach,”’ ought here to 
retain its etymological sense of ‘* to serve as a herald, to proclaim the order 
of the contests or the name of the victor,”’ etc.—It is known that the word 
dddxipos (in the Vulgate reprobus) means “ rejected, refused,” like a coin 
of base mixture and like a competitor unworthy of the prize. 


348 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


upon his breast in order to demonstrate his defeat. This is 
the treatment which the Apostle inflicts upon his body; he 
beats it unmercifully like a mortal enemy and keeps it under 
foot like a vanquished slave. 

What the accomplishment of his ministry must have cost 
him in fatigues, dangers, privations, and sufferings we could 
easily guess, even if we did not have his discreet disclosures 
on that point.1_ He endured all with resignation and even 
with joy; for he knows that the Apostle, after the example 
of his Master, saves others only by the cross: ‘‘I rejoice in 
my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are want- 
ing of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, 
which is the Church.’’? To the trials occasioned by men or 
sent by God, he adds voluntary renunciations. All his ambi- 
tion is ‘‘ to carry about in his body everywhere the crucifixion 
of Jesus,’’* and ‘‘to bear in his flesh the marks’’ of the 
Crucified.4 

This attitude in regard to his fellow-creatures and to 
himself, however generous it may be, nevertheless presents 
only the negative, and as it were the reverse, side of per- 
fection. It has for its effect to break all the ties which 
attach the soul to earth and to remove the obstacles which 
hinder its flight towards heaven. Such was the disposition 
of St Paul from the first moment of his conversion: ‘‘ The 
things that were gain to me, the same I have counted loss 
for Christ. Furthermore, I count all things to be but loss 
for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord, for 
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them 
but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in 
him, not having my justice which is of the Law, but that which 
is through faith in Christ, which is of God, [grounded] on 
faith.’’® Not content with purifying his soul from earthly 


#22 Cor, X1)23-30, * Colei, 2420 Cfo pacos 
$72 COV AV 10, eGfe p50; Mage 
S*Galfviti7: 

5 Phil. iii, 7-9. Verse 7 has nothing obscure in it: guae mthi fuerunt 
(better evant) lucra=all the just enumerated human gains—descent from 
the purest Hebrew blood, a spotless reputation in regard to legal justice, etc. 
—these I have counted loss for Christ, from whom they alienated me.—The 
difficulty is in verse 8. Many interpreters see in it a simple repetition of 
verse 7. Formerly I despised these things; now I despise all that (xavra= 
arwa). The contrast is then between the past (7ynuat) and the present 
(jyodpat). But this interpretation is a weak one and the application un- 
satisfactory, for: (a) The present (jyodpmat) is not in opposition to the 
perfect (jynuat), which expresses an action or a state whtch still endures.— 
(6) It is assumed gratuitously that mdvra is equivalent to dtwa, for it would 
be necessary to have at least ra ravra =all that I have just spoken of.—(c) The 
structure of the phrase indicates a progress in the thought (aAAd . . . xaé), 
which can be translated by much more.—The meaning therefore is: not only 
have I regarded and still regard the temporal gains, which I sacrificed’ for 
Christ, as loss, but even (dAAa xa) I consider a// earthly goods (mdvra) 
as refuse (oxvBaAa). 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 349 


affections, he turns towards the inimitable model and 
endeavours to reproduce him. 


Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect ; but 
I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also 
apprehended by Christ Jesus. 

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing 
I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching myself forth 
to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the 
heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ 


The allegory of the race is here perfectly plain. To look 
behind is for the runner in the stadium as useless an act as 
it is dangerous. He must keep his gaze fixed constantly 
before him, in order not to swerve from the straight line 
and also to prevent the surprises, accidents, and obstacles 
which would retard his progress and cause his fall. The 
desire to win gives him wings, and he strains all his nerves 
and thoughts towards that goal, knowing well that a 
moment’s relaxation might cost him the victory. See, for 
example, the old statues of nimble runners whose feet 
scarcely touch the earth, whose breasts are thrown forward 
and their arms stretched out towards the goal which they 
devour with their eyes. 

On the road to perfection there is no halting or resting. 
Therefore St Paul forgets gladly what he has already accom- 
plished; he effaces it from his memory and dispels the 
thought of it. To go forward constantly, to get nearer and 
nearer to the goal, and little by little to diminish the distance 
that separates him from his sublime Model, that is his only 
anxiety. That ceaseless striving for what is better, that 
constant tension of soul, Paul expresses with an untrans- 
latable force when he says: ad ea quae priora sunt extendens 
meipsum. 

Nevertheless, St Paul foresees that all the faithful are not 
yet prepared for this teaching. Many will not hear it or 
will understand it amiss. But with these minds, more 
sluggish than disobedient, he knows how to temporize, and 
stoops to their level of weakness, saying to them: ‘“* Let 
all of us therefore who are perfect be thus minded; and if 


1 Phil. iii, 12-14. One phrase of this text is ambiguous both in Latin and 
Greek. Seguor autem, si gquomodo comprehendam in quo et comprehensus 
sum a Christo Jesu: Sidbxw 88 «i Kal KaraAdBw ed’ & cat careAngOnv bro X.'I. 
We have adopted in the text the simplest translation, which understands 
before é¢’ & the antecedent éxeivo [¢//ud] 12 quo, “ that for which,” and makes 
it governed by the two verbs segui and comprehendere. However, the 
Greeks (Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret) take €¢’ & in the 
sense of because, a meaning which zm guo also possesses ; I pursue [the ideal 
of perfection] in order to try to seize (or attain it), because I have myself been 
seized by Christ: xarediwfev ye 6 Xpiords, kal devyovra am’ avrob KaréAaBev, © 
Kat éréotpepev (Theophylact). The idea is just and beautiful and the inter- 
pretation attractive, but in the other explanation the phrase is clearer and 
smoother. 


350 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


in anything you be otherwise minded, this also God will 
reveal to you.’’? 


4. Is it possible, without the Eucharist, to reach this 


ideal state of perfection? ‘‘ Except you eat the flesh of 
the Son of man,’’ said Jesus, ‘‘ and drink his blood, you 
shall not have life in you. . . . For my flesh is meat indeed 
and my blood is drink indeed.’’ Understood in their natural 


sense, these words teach us that the eucharistic bread and 
wine are as necessary for the maintenance and progress of 
the life of the soul as material food is for the life of the 
body. We can be born to the life of grace without the 
Eucharist, and that is why baptism, actual or desired, is 
necessarily the only means; but we cannot long retain, 
strengthen, and increase this life without the eucharistic 
food, unless by a miracle comparable to that of a human 
body growing in strength and stature, although deprived 
of all nourishment. The Eucharist is therefore necessary, 
not only as an act of obedience to the commands of God or 
the Church in order to avoid the death of sin, but as,the 
condition normally requisite to perfect in ourselves the life 
of Christ. 

St Paul reaches the same point by an entirely different 
road. While St John considers the part played by the 
Eucharist in the life of the individual soul, Paul regards it 
in its relations to the mystical body: ‘‘ The chalice of bene- 
diction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood 
of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not the 
communion of the body of Christ? For there is only one 
bread, and we all make one body, since we all partake of 
that one bread.’’? Chrysostom’s commentary is very acute: 


1 Phil. iii, 15, 16: et siguid aliter sapitis, et hoc vobts Deus revelabit 
(amroxaAviper). 

* 1 Cor. x, 16-17. In verse 16 the Vulgate translation communtcatio 
Sanguinis and participatio corporis is not a happy one; it is communio 
(kowvwvia) that is needed in both cases. 

In many of the Latin manuscripts verse 17 reads thus : Quoniam unus pants 
ET unum corpus multi sumus omnes qui de uno pane participamus. The 
ordinary gloss commented thereon as follows: Unus panis, undone fidet, 
spet et charitatis. Corpus est per subministrationem charitatis ; quia unum 
sumus et unum sentire debemus (Migne, CXIV, 536). An obscure com- 
mentary copied by the Scholastics.—P. Cornely, without reading e¢ between 
pants and corpus, thinks that the two words are co-ordinated and that it is 
necessary to render it “‘ We are one bread, one body, because we partake of 
the same bread.’”’ He invokes the authority of Ambrosiaster, Chrysostom 
and other Greek Fathers ; but I do not see any such thing in Ambrosiaster, 
whose whole commentary is as follows : Quoniam unum sumus, alter alterius 
membra, unum nos sentire debere dicit, ut fides una unum habeat opus. 
And there is nothing in the Greek Fathers with the exception of Cyril of 
Alexandria who, without commenting on it, quotes our text in a very singular 
manner (J Joan. x, Migne, LXXIV, 341): Of yap mdvres év cGpd éopev ev 
Xpiorg, dre els dpros ot moAAol oper of yap mdvres x TOO évds dprow 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 351 


‘Paul does not say participation, but communion, because 
he wishes to express a closer union. For, in receiving Holy 
Communion, we not only participate in Christ, we unite with 
him. . In fact, as this body is united with Christ, so by this 
bread we are united with Christ. . . . But why do I speak 
of communion? Paul says that we are identically this body. 
For what is this bread? The body of Christ. And what do 
we become by receiving this bread? The body of Christ: 
not many bodies, but one only.”’ | 

It seems, therefore, that without the Eucharist, which iS 
‘‘the sacrament of piety, the [efficacious] sign of unity and 
the bond of charity,’’ according to the famous expression of St 
Augustine, the mystical body would not have all the perfec- 
tion which is its due. Christians would neither be united 
with Christ nor with one another by that ineffable union 
which Holy Communion produces and which the Lord meant 
for his Church when he instituted the Eucharist. If our in- 
corporation into Christ by faith and baptism is sufficient for 
salvation, communion with Christ is indispensable for the social 
perfection of the mystical body and even, normally, for the in- 
dividual perfection of the Christian. The consequence is 
evident to everyone who remembers that the eucharistic food, 
unlike ordinary nourishment, has the power of transforming 
us into it. 


SS  ....  —— ———— 


peréxouev.— The majority of modern exegetes and translators (Segond, 
Crampon, Lemonnyer, Weizsacker) explain the verse as we have done, 
understanding ée7iv after dt els dpros, which serves as the protasis, while 
év gdpa of moAdol écpev is the apodosis, and the words of yap mavres €x 
700 évés dprov peréxopev give the reason for the complete assertion: 
“Because there is one [eucharistic] bread only, we are all one [mystical] 
body ; since we all partake of this same [eucharistic] bread.”’ The exegesis 


is very simple and the grammar unobjectionable. 


CHAPTER II 
(THE LAST THINGS 


I—Points oF ConTACT WITH JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 


1. Difficulty of the Subject. 2. The Present Age and the Age to Come. 
3. The True Sources of New Testament Eschatology. 


ve NDER the comprehensive name of eschatology 
are often designated death and the intermediate 
state, the parousia with its precedent signs, the 
resurrection, the judgement, the retribution of 
the good and the wicked, and the consummation 
of all things. The special word apocalypse is reserved for the 
moral and religious crisis which is to precede the last day, 
with its preliminary phases and the dramatic conflict waged 
between the powers of heaven and hell in regard to the human 
race. These terms have passed into common use and we shall 
employ them, for the sake of brevity, conjointly with that 
of the “‘last things,’’ which includes, besides individual 
destinies, the final lot of humanity and the ultimate trans- 
formation of the universe. 

We know that the eschatological teaching of St Paul clearly 
tends to diminish. After having played such a great role in 
the Epistles to the Thessalonians and still holding a notable 
place in the great Epistles, it appears only incidentally and at 
long intervals in the writings of the captivity and in the 
Pastoral Epistles.’ From the day when the theory of the 
mystical body of Christ was set by him in high relief, his whole 
attention was concentrated on that subject: eschatology is 
thenceforth only the normal ending, the regular coronation of 
the moral life. Far from being the most original feature of 
Paul’s theology, eschatology would be only an appendix to 
it of little interest, if it were not so closely connected on the 
one hand with the primitive teaching of the apostles and by 
that very fact with the first transfiguration of Jewish hopes, 
and on the other hand with the doctrine of the mystical body, 
which St Paul has made specially his own. We shall out- 
line its principal characteristics by grouping them under four 
heads: 1. Points of contact with Jewish eschatology. 2. 
Death and the resurrection. 3. Parousia and the judgement. 
4. The consummation of all things. 


If an accurate knowledge of New Testament times is 
nowhere more desirable for the historian of the origins of 


+ The principal eschatological texts, in the order of dates, are 1 Thess. 
Iv, 13-v, §; 2 Thess. i, 4-12 ; ii, 2-12; 1 Cor. xv; 2 Cor. v, 1-10; Rom. viii, 
17-23 ; x1, 25-29; Phil. iii, 21 ; 2 Tim. iv, 1-8. 

352 


THE LAST THINGS 353 


Christianity than precisely in questions of eschatology, 
nowhere also is that knowledge more difficult to obtain. The 
Hellenist writers of the epoch, Philo and Josephus, anxious 
to adapt Jewish thought, one to the taste of his pagan readers, 
the other to the postulates of Greek philosophy, were able 
only to alter, veil or attenuate it. Rabbinical works, of a 
date so uncertain and in general so late, ought to be utilized 
only with extreme circumspection. The Targums of Onkelos 
and of Jonathan, even if they are of the first century, as is 
commonly believed, and not of the third century, as some 
recent critics vigorously maintain, throw but little light upon 
the subject of contemporary eschatology, for one of them, 
even in paraphrasing, does not wish to abandon his role of 
interpreter, and the other is only a scrupulously exact trans- 
lator. The clearest sources of Jewish traditions—the Mishna, 
written apparently towards the end of the second century, 
and the Tosephta, composed perhaps at the dawn of the 
third—regarded as pandects, touch upon eschatology but 
very incidentally. It is through the Gemara of the two 
Talmuds and through the Midrashim that eschatological 
ideas run most abundantly; but if we read Weber’s Jewish 
Theology or any other similar book, we see what can be 
extracted from that confused, incoherent, and contradictory 
mass of trash. 

There remain the Jewish apocalypses, which were so 
numerous about the beginning of the Christian era. Here 
again we are assailed by difficulties of every kind. It has 
been justly said: ‘‘ It is a delicate task, to put a little order 
into this chaos, at the risk of sacrificing many a fine shade 
of thought to the necessity of finally reaching some general 
ideas ; a necessary task nevertheless on account of the extreme 
—and let us say at once disproportionate—importance which 
is to-day ascribed to these productions of a feverishly agitated 
and exhausted age.’’ It would not be too severe to describe 
them as a “‘ gigantic effort in the void, or a tedious dream 
enlivened by a few flashes of common sense in the nightmare 
of a sick man, yet containing at times real beauties of style, 
with a religious and still more nationalistic tone, at once 
sincere and passionate.’’! But the trouble of disentangling 
this chaos is not the only one. The Jewish apocalypses, as 
they have come down to us, swarm with Christian interpola- 
tions. How can we recognize with certainty the hand of the 
forger and the extent of his forgeries? It is an arduous 
problem, always complicated and often insoluble. 

As apostolic times approached, Jewish eschatology became 
at once more universal, more individual, and more spiritual : 
more universal, because it now looked beyond the national 


1 Lagrange, Le messiantsme ches les Juifs, Paris, 1909, p. 39. 
Il. 23 


354 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


horizon and busied itself with the destinies of all peoples; 
more individual, because, having ceased to blend in one mass 
the lot of individuals in the history of Israel, it evolved with 
ever-increasing intensity the sense of personal responsibility ; 
and finally more spiritual, because it rose at times above the 
dreams of an exaggerated patriotism and a vulgar realism: 
if the idea of an earthly kingdom still haunted the imagina- 
tion, it no longer formed the sum total of the messianic hopes. 
This can be truly said in general; yet this systematic view 
might involve us in the risk of going astray. In every advance 
there are halts, deviations from the route, and even retro- 
grade movements to be taken into account. Each document 
requires a separate treatment. But this study, fortunately, 
does not belong to our subject and we shall confine our- 
selves here to pointing out an idea of considerable import- 
ance in the evolution of eschatology. 


2. The prophets regarded the appearance of the Messiah 
as the beginning of a new era: it was the starting-point of 
the end of days,’ the beginning of the reign of holiness and 
justice which the day of the Lord was to precede or 
to conclude. The fulfilment of the messianic promises 
and the final destinies of all the nations were grouped 
together in a picture without perspective, in which all 
the events seem to blend. Sometimes it might be said 
that all this future is contained in only one indivisible moment. 
The exegesis of the Rabbis was based upon these data. In 
proportion as it separated the earthly reign of the Messiah 
from his eternal reign and by fantastic calculations assigned 
to the first reign a duration of forty, seventy, a hundred, six 
hundred, a thousand years or more, it obtained for the end 
of days a double point of departure, the origin of which it 
fixed either at the commencement or the end of the terrestrial 
kingdom. In principle, the history of humanity was divided 
into two periods, the present age and the age to come, and 
there were two worlds measured by these two periods, the 
present world and the future world. To what age and to 
what world did the temporal kingdom belong? Naturally, 
the apocalypses without a Messiah had not to face this 
question ; but the others could solve the problem in two ways: 
either the whole eschatology was referred to the future world, 
or it was divided, so to speak, into two judgements,two resur- 


* The expression 09793M DYNA (tn fine dierum) is found in Gen. 
xlix,1; Num. xxiv, 14; Deut. iv, 30; xxxi, 29 ; Is.-ii}*2 +) Jer.<xxiiecor 
Xxx, 24; xlvili, 47; xlix, 39; Ezech. xxviii, 16; Os. lil, 5; Mich. iv, 1; 
Ezech. xxxviii, 8 employs the synonym pwn MINNA (tx fine annorum), 
Kimchi rightly remarks in regard to Is. ii, 2: Ubicumgque leguntur haec 
verba, 1bt sermo est de diebus Messiae. Indeed, all the texts in which this 
expression is met are to some extent messianic. 


THE LAST THINGS 355 


rections, two messianic reigns, and two restorations. As 
each writer represented only his own personal authority, we 
do not know to which system it is proper to award the pre- 
ference; and if we think of the retouchings, manipulations 
and interpolations which these documents have undergone, 
and of the heaps of heterogeneous writings which are pre- 
sented to us under one and the same title, the confusion knows 
no limits. 

That which essentially distinguishes Christian from Jewish 
eschatology is its faith in the double advent of Christ. The 
messianic hopes are indeed already realized, yet only in part ; 
the ancient prophecies are explained and precisely indicated 
in the light of history; the vistas recede and become 
harmonious; all the points of view are changed by the fact 
itself: the resurrection, the judgement, the final retribution 
are carried on into the future and are all connected with the 
second advent. The horizon may appear more or less distant, 
the supreme crisis more or less near; but that is a secondary 
point, and Christian eschatology acquires a clearness of 
contours and a relative firmness in its lines which Jewish 
eschatology never had. 

Nevertheless, the terminology which it inherited did not 
adapt itself easily to the new conceptions. From this fact 
come uncertainties of expression and differences in the use 
of words. Thus the end of the age coincides, in St Matthew, 
with the end of the world; in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
conformably to the language of the prophets, with the dawn 
of the messianic age. St Paul gives the same meaning to the 
fulness of the times and also to the end of the ages.!_ The 
limit of the last days is scarcely more definite. According 
to the different points of view, we have either already reached 
them or are still awaiting them. 

We have seen what an exceptional role the conception of 
the world or of the present age plays in the New Testament, 
and especially in St Paul. But the corresponding notion of 
the world or the age to come has not by any means the same 


* The expression 7 ovvréAeta Tob aldivos (consummatio saeculr) in St Matt. 
denotes five times (xiii, 39, 40, 49 ; xxiv, 3 ; xxviii, 20) the epoch of the parousta, 
In the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix, 26: vuvi dé dat emt ouvredelg dv aldvwv) 
it coincides with the messianic era. This is also the meaning of 76 mAjpwyua 
Tob xpovou (Gal. iv, 4) or raév xatpaév (Eph. i, 10).—The end of all things in 
the Prima Petri (iv, 7: mdvrwv 76 rédos) is eschatological ; the end of the 
ages in St Paul (1 Cor. x, 11: 7a réAn T&v aidvewv) is messianic and recalls 
the prophecies referring to the end of the times.—The last day and the last 
hour are always associated, in the fourth Gospel, with the resurrection and 
the judgement. Elsewhere the meaning varies : it is eschatological in James 
v, 3; 1 Pet. i, 5; it includes the messianic age in 2 Tim. iii, 1 (€” éoydrats 
Heepas) ; 1 Tim. iv, 1 (€v dorépows xatpots) ; 1 Pet. i, 20 (én’ €oxdTov Tay 
xporwy) ; 2 Pet. ili, 3 (€a’ €oxdtwy Tad Hyepay) ; Jud. 18 (éx’ éoxdrov xpdvov). 
In some of these cases this may be the /ast phase of messianic times, as also 
inft John ii, 18: €oxdrn dpa éoriv. 


356 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


importance. St Paul mentions only once ‘‘ the age to come,’’* 
and once ‘‘ the ages to come’’;? on the other hand, the 
Epistle to the Hebrews mentions once ‘‘ the powers of the 
world to come,’’? and twice ‘‘ the world or the city to come.’’* 
And that is all. How are we to explain the rarity of this 
expression, when the phrase which forms a pendant to it is 
so frequent? This phenomenon, attributed by Bousset to 
mere accident, seems, however, to be attributable to other 
causes than chance. It is because the writers of the New 
Testament give the present age or present world only a 
moral value; the present age has lost its notion of duration 
and the present world its idea of space; thenceforth, the 
present age and the age to come can interpenetrate each 
other ; there is no chronological interval between them; there 
are only opposing influences. On the one hand, the idea of a 
sudden catastrophe inaugurating the reign of the Messiah 
and of an instantaneous cataclysm caused by God alone, 
without the co-operation of man, who will be only a passive 
spectator, gradually gives place to that of a messianic 
kingdom developing by degrees until the consummation of all 
things. In these conditions the Jewish concept of the age 
or the world to come was almost inapplicable and it was 
necessary to replace it by eternal life.® 


3. On the whole, the Apocrypha and the Talmud offer very 
little help to an understanding of New Testament eschatology. 
All those who use this method in the hope of finding some 
light therein return from the effort disappointed, and those 
who send us thither with so much confidence make us suspect 
that they have not pursued the path very far themselves. 
A text from Daniel casts perhaps more light on the escha- 
tology of the New Testament than all the rabbinical writings 
put together : 

At that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, the defender of 


the children of thy people. And a time of tribulation shall come such 
as never was from the time that nations began. And at that time shall 





Toe DOJ 2d as *. Eph. ii, 7. ® Heb. vi, 5. 

* Heb. ii, 5 ; xiii, 14. 

® To what epoch can we trace back the distinction between the present age 
and the age to come? The Hebrew text of the O.T. gives us no indication 
of it; nor do the deutero-canonical books (except perhaps Tob. xiv, 5: 
€ws 7AnpwiGaow xatpot rot aidvos); the words zarhp rob péAAovros aidvos 
of the Codex Alexandrinus (Is. ix, 7) are a Christian correction for the 
true translation of the Septuagint peyaAns BovdAfs dyyedos. Nor is it in 
Philo. But on the contrary, it is found quite frequently in the fourth book 
of Esdras viii, 1: Hoc saeculum fecit Altissimus propter multos, futurum 
autem propter paucos. So also vi, 7, 9, 20; vii, 12-13, 42-43, etc. In the 
Apocalypse of Baruch the “ age” is replaced by its synonym the “ world,” 
xlviii, 50: Sicut in hoc mundo qui praeterit laborem multum pertulistis, tta 
tn mundo illo cua fints non est accipietis lucem magnam. Cf. xiv, 13; 
xv, 7-8; xliv, r5. 


THE LAST THINGS 357 


ans people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book of 
life. And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, 
some unto life eternal and others unto eternal shame and reproach. 
But they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, 
and they that have instructed many to justice, as stars for all eternity.’ 


This passage, which has been the object of numberless 
allusions and reminders, informs us of the unequalled role of 
the archangel Michael in the Jewish-Christian eschatology, 
the times of extreme tribulation which are to precede the 
great day, the Book of Life in which the names of the just 
are inscribed and in which are recorded their claims to a 
glorious immortality, the resurrection common to both the 
good and the wicked, the eternal life of the just and the 
incomparable glory of the elect, the endless opprobrium and 
ignominy which are the lot of the rejected, and the final 
division of the good and the bad, separated ‘‘ for ever and 
ever’’ by an impassable barrier. These are the seven 
principal truths which sum up the doctrine of the last things. 

Daniel, the second part of Isaias, the portions of the 
prophets referring to the judgement and the end of days, and 
the Books of the Machabees constitute the true sources of 
the New Testament eschatology. In the slough of the 
Apocrypha and the rabbinical writings a few particles of gold 
can be sometimes met with, but with how much dross are 
they combined ! 


II—DEaATH AND THE RESURRECTION 


1. Death and the Hereafter. 2. The Resurrection of the Just. 
3. The Fate of the Living. 


1. Death has meanings as varied as those of its antithesis, 
life.2 Besides natural death or the physical destruction of 
the human composite, St Paul mentions a spiritual death, 
the death of sin, which is opposed to the life of grace 
and, at the end of the era of probation, becomes eternal 
death. The wicked deserve death and sin works death; 
‘* death is the wages of sin.’’* Physical death, spiritual 


} Dan. xii, 1-4. 

8 Kabisch (Zschatol. des Paulus, pp. 109-110) and Tobac (Probléme de la 
fustific., p. 79 and passim) claim that death in St Paul’s writings must always 
be understood as physical death. This thesis seems wholly untenable. 
“Death ” and “to die’ are used figuratively in many texts, for example : 
Rom: 1, 32; vi, 2, 7, 8, 11, 16, 21; vii, 4, 6, 10; vili, 6, 13; 2 Cor. v, 14; 
vii, 10; Gal. ii, 19; Eph. ii, 1, 5; Col. ii, 13, 20; iii, 3; 1 Tim. v, 6; 2 Tim. 
ii, 11. It is impossible to escape the force of these texts by subtle arguments 
or by doing violence to the natural meaning of the words. On the other hand, 
others (Schmidt, Dire Lehre des Ap. Paulus, pp. 35-49) maintain that death, 
as the consequence of sin, always means spiritual death. The truth lies 
between the two. 

* Rom. vi, 23. The meaning appears here from the opposition: 7é 
Se ydpiopa rot Beot {wi alwvios. So also Rom. vi, 24 (finss t/lorum mors 
est)s 


358 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


death, eternal death, all these directly or indirectly go back 
to a common source, the transgression of Eden. But there 
is a fourth death, a remedy for the three others, mystical 
death in Christ, which is for the soul and for the body the 
prelude and the pledge of a glorious immortality: ‘‘ You 
are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’’—‘‘ One 
died for all, therefore all have died’’? mystically with him. 

It is as a punishment for sin that death is terrible. To the 
instinctive horror of dissolution is added the fear of the Judge 
and the uncertainty of what lies beyond. In the metaphorical 
language of St Paul, ‘‘ sin is the sting of death.’’? Death 
uses sin as a poisoned dart to widen his empire, or perhaps 
rather as a piercing arrow to terrorize men and lead them at 
his will. Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin, takes from death 
its malevolent and painful*sting and will one day render it 
powerless and harmless. If it retains to the last a remnant of 
its ancient power and yielded only last of all to the triumph of 
the cross, it has already lost its terrors. In spite of natural 
repugnances, the feeling of Christian resignation, preached to 
the faithful of Thessalonica and of Corinth, makes its appear- 
ance, and also the more heroic feeling of fond desire for death, 
which Paul, without giving up conformity to the divine will, 
frequently reveals. Thenceforth, life is a duty to accept and 
death a gain to which to aspire. 

What becomes of the soul when separated from the body? 
What are its relations with God, with the living, and with 
the dead? On all these problems St Paul gives but little 
information and still less in the way of teaching. Quite a 
large number of heterodox theologians claim that the Apostle 
imagines the soul to be inactive, torpid, or asleep, while 
awaiting the hour of the resurrection.* Like the shadowy 
forms which hovered on the shores of the mythological 
Erebus, it had no longer any feeling, memory, consciousness, 
or personality; and there it needed nothing less than the 
blast of the last trumpet to draw it from its lethargy. The 
advocates of this theory rely upon the word “‘ sleeping ”’ 


1 Col. iii, 1; 2 Cor. v, 14.—So also Rom. vi, 2 (mortuz sumus peccato, 
dative and not instrumental ablative). 

* 1 Cor. xv, 56: 76 5€ xévrpov rob Bavaro 7 duapria. 

* The partisans of this theory can be divided into three classes : (a) those 
who admit it and seek proofs of it everywhere in the N.T.; (4) those who 

attribute it specially to Paul without distinction of time (Dahne, KGstlin, etc.) ; 
(c) those who claim that Paul maintained it until after the first Epistle to 
the Corinthians (Usteri, Pfleiderer, etc.). Later, he is believed to have 
altered his mind when the prospect of a speedy parousta commenced to recede 
and he perceived that he might die before the return of Christ. His acquaint- 
ance with Apollos, who was imbued with Hellenist ideas about immortality, 
may have had something to do with this change of opinion. 

It must be said that many Protestants do not share these views. Messner 
finds the theory arbitrary (Lehre der Apostel, p. 283) ; Beyschlag thinks it 
rather unnatural (Meutest. Theol.*, vol. ii, p. 272) ; Weiss combats it (Bzd/. 
Theol. des N.T.°, pp. 395-396), as do Schmidt and Wendt. 


THE LAST THINGS 359 


sometimes given to the dead ;! but this support is very weak. 
In all literatures death and sleep are brothers; sleep is the 
living image of death, and to die is to sleep. This metaphor 
suits Christian death still better, since this is a bond of union 
between two lives, a short interlude between two acts of one 
and the same existence. If death involved the loss of thought, 
death would have nothing desirable in it. Paul teaches ex- 
pressly that it does not separate the just from Christ.? To 
depart from the body is for the soul to leave this world to 
go to the Saviour and to live with him.* The crown awaits 
the victor at the end of the struggle, which is a figure of the 
present life. That which sleeps in us is, therefore, not the 
soul, it is the body resting in the dust of the tomb, for which 
the resurrection will be an awakening. 

If the just enter at once into the possession of the state of 
blessedness without waiting for the last day, it is natural 
that sinners should undergo their punishment at once after 
the end of their earthly trial. Nevertheless, the Apostle says 
nothing on this subject. Nor does he speak to us of the 
individual judgement which decides the destiny of each man 
immediately after his decease. But this immediate discrimina- 
tion is in the nature of things, and from this fact it appears 
that neither the happiness of the elect nor, by analogy, the 
punishment of the rejected is deferred until the parousia. 
Perhaps the way in which the Epistle to the Hebrews brings 
the judgement close to death without, apparently, any interval 
between the two events, authorizes the same conclusion. ° 


1 The dead are those who are asleep (of Kexotunpévot, 1 Cor. xv, 20; 
Matt. xxvii, 52) ; who have fallen asleep (of xotpnfevres, 1 Cor. xv, 18; 
1 Thess. iv, 14, 15); who sleep (of xotpdpevor, 1 Thess. iv, 13).—To sleep 
(xotpa@oGat) is again taken metaphorically in the sense of dying, John xi, 11; 
Acts vii, 60; xili, 36; 1 Cor. vii, 39; xv, 51; 2 Pet. iii, 4—By means of a 
similar metaphor, death is a rest (Heb. iv, 3, 11; Apoc. xiv, 13).—It is 
noteworthy that Jesus Christ himself is called “‘ the firstfruits of them that 
sleep” (1 Cor. xv, 20: dmapx7) Tv Kexotunpévwr), and consequently forms 
part of those who slept (note the perfect participle of the verb and the force 
of the word dmapy7); whence it follows that death does not involve any 
more for us than for Christ the loss of intellectual activity and consciousness. 

2 Phil. i, 21, 23: émOvploy eEywv els To dvadioa xal odv Xpiord clvat, 
MOAAG yap paddAov Kpetaoov. It is evident that the dissolution of the body 
and life with Christ are simultaneous ; if there were to be an interval, life 
would be preferable to death. 

2 2 Cor. v, 6-8. The simultaneousness of being absent from the body and 
being present with the Lord is evident, because of the antithesis (dum sumus 
in corpore peregrinamur a Domino). But praesentes esse ad Dominum is 
ambulare per spectem ; to enjoy the beatific vision. 

‘ 2 Tim. ii, 5.—In 2 Tim. iv, 8, the (solemn) coronation of the victor is 
referred to the last day (€v éxeivy 77 juepq), but ii, 5-6 does not imply such 
a long interval between the victory and the reward, or between the labour and 
the harvest; the reward is decreed immediately after the contest and the 
harvest follows the work at once. 

6 Heb. ix, 27: dmdxerrat tots avOpwmos drat dmoGaveiv, pera $2 roiro 
xpiots. Scholastic theologians in general understand by this text the 
particular judgement ; but the exegetes are much divided, and the reasons 


360 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


We do not find either any positive teaching about the fate 
of the just who end life with venial or not entirely expiated 
faults. Nothing impure enters heaven, and no one is received 
in the bosom of God without having paid his debt to the utter- 
most farthing : the doctrine of purgatory is based upon these 
biblical data and upon tradition; but the text of St Paul, 
invoked by many, furnishes rather an indication than an in- 
controvertible proof.1_ This want of details about conditions 
beyond the grave ought not to surprise us, since all the 
interest of the Apostle centres in the fact of the resurrection 
and in the dominant truth that the just are intimately united 
to Christ in death as in life. 


2. We know from the Epistle to the Hebrews that the 
resurrection of the dead was, together with the last judgement, 
one of the cardinal points of the apostolic catechetical teach- 
ing.” Paul never failed to place at the foundation of his 
teaching the resurrection of Jesus, to which he united our 
own resurrection as a corollary.* Neither the railleries of the 
Athenians* nor the sarcasm of the procurator Festus® nor 
the scepticism of the king Agrippa® nor the incredulity of the 
Sadducees’ could induce him to conceal so essential a truth. 
He would have blushed to purchase his liberty at the price 
of a dishonourable silence, and he gloried in having been 
persecuted for this article of faith. We know what were his 
surprise and indignation on learning that doubts had arisen 
about such a fundamental dogma in a church founded by him.® 

He had preached at Cesarea the general resurrection of the 
just and the unjust,® and it was undoubtedly thus that the doc- 
trine of the resurrection had usually to be presented, the well- 
known text of Daniel and the positive teaching of Jesus being 
cited, which were in this respect in accord with the most 
authorized opinion of the Jews of that time.*® Nevertheless, 





alleged by both sides leave a doubt. See Atzberger, Zschatologie, pp. 204-209. 

—As to 2 Cor. v, 10, almost all the exegetes see in it only the last judgement. 
1 1 Cor. ili, 11-15. Cf. Vol. I, pp. 94-96.—For the texts of the N.T. in 

favour of purgatory see Atzberger, Dze christl. Eschat., Freiburg i. B., 1890, 
p. 269-282. 

PF, Heb. vi, 2: dvaordcews vexpav kal xptwaros alwviov. These two articles 

belong to the foundation (@euéAcov) of the Christian doctrine. 

8 1 Cor. xv, 1-13. Note the final protestation : Sive enim ego, sive tli: 
sic praedicamus et sic credtdtstis. From this point of view Paul’s preaching 
had nothing special about it. 

* Acts: xvit,(32.-- Cys. Vol lap. 62: § Acts xxvi, 24. 

evActs <xVin 27425, 7 Acts xxiii, 6-8. 

® 1 Cor. xv, 12: m@s Adyovoty ev tuiv reves Sr avaoracis vexpav 
ovx €or; only a. few do so; but even this fractional doubt appears to him 
unlikely. 

° Acts xxiv, 15 : dvdoracw pédAew écecBa Stxalwyv re Kal addixwyv. 

*© Dan. xii, 2: Et multi de his gui dormiunt tn terrae pulvere evigilabunt : 
lit in vitam aeternam et alii in opprobrium ut videant semper. In place 
of ut‘videant semper, it should read tn tgnominiam sempiternam ; but this 


THE LAST THINGS 361 


in his Epistles, Paul seems to pay attention merely to the 
resurrection of the just ; his arguments are valid only for that 
resurrection, and his context most frequently imposes a limita- 
tion which it is proper to extend by analogy to two or three 
doubtful expressions. It is true that in the First Epistle to 
the Corinthians he mentions without any distinction the resur- 
rection of the dead,* but all the rest of the argument shows 
that he is speaking of the glorious resurrection; and when, 
in the Epistle to the Philippians, he expresses the wish to 
‘attain to the resurrection from the dead,’’? his thought is 
not ambiguous; it is to the glorious resurrection that he 
aspires. Good exegetes are of the opinion that the signal 
victory won by Christ over death presupposes or requires for 
its meaning the universal resurrection ; for they say, if all the 
dead did not rise, the defeat of death would be only partial, 
and St Paul would not have the right to say: Novissima 
autem inimica destruetur mors.* This argument does not 
appear to us very decisive. The victory of Christ over sin will 
be complete also, like his victory over death; and that does 
not involve the conversion of all sinners. The fact is that the 
fruits of redemption, though universal in principle, are in 
reality conditioned by the co-operation of man. The victory 
of Christ over death will be absolute in those who unite with 
him to share in his victory; in the others it could be only 
potential, like the victory over sin. Weaker still appears the 
argument drawn from the text: ‘‘ Everyone [shall rise] in 
his own order: the firstfruits, Christ; then they that are 
Christ’s, at his coming ; afterwards the erd.’’* 


error does not obscure the text as regards the two categories of the resur- 
rected. The Hebrew word rabbim (multt), which signifies properly “ the 
multitude,”’ is used for the totality and the whole as well as of the part. 
Cf. John v, 28, 29: Omnes quit in monumentis sunt, audient vocem Filit Det ; 
et procedent qut bona fecerunt, in resurrectionem vitae ; gut vero mala 
egerunt, in resurrectionem judtcit. For the doctrine of Judaism, see pp. 475-6. 

1 1 Cor. xv, 42 () avdotacis Tay vexpav); cf. xv, 12, 13, 21 (avaoraats 
vEKPOV ). 

2 Phil. ili, 11: ef mws xatavryow els rHv eLavdoraow THv ex vexpdv. 

* x Cor. xv, 26. Cornely and Godet among others are of this opinion. 

“ 1 Cor. xv, 23-24: “Exacros 8€ ev th idiw Tdypatt amapyn Xptords, 
éeita of Tob Xpiotod €v rH mapovoia avrod, elra 76 Tédos, KTA. 

In the preceding verses St Paul has just said that Christ has risen from 
the dead as the firstfruits of them that sleep, that the resurrection is the 
deed of one man (Jesus Christ), as death was the deed of one man (Adam) ; 
and that all shall be made alive in Christ, as all diein Adam. This quicken- 
ing—the resurrection of the dead—is accomplished in a certain order which 
forms the subject of the present verse. Let us remark at first that the text 
of the Vulgate is paraphrased in a rather unhappy way: Unusguisque autem 
tn suo ordine » primitiae Christus ; detnde tt qui sunt Christi qui im adventu 
ejuscrediderunt. The words inroman type are added. By omitting them the 
meaning becomes simple: ‘‘ Every one [shall rise] in his own order : Christ, 
the firstfruits ; then those who [belong to] Christ, at the time of his appear- 
ance.” The question is to know: (A) what the word order (rdyya) signifies. 
(B) How many orders are enumerated. 


362 THE. THEOLOGY OF :ST* PAUL 


Some would like to make this the end of the resurrection 
and the third order of the resurrected, of those who do not 
belong to Christ; but this is to read too much between the 
lines. It is a fact, however, that the resurrection of sinners 
has no great interest for the Apostle, because it is not con- 
nected with his doctrine and usually remains beyond his field 
of vision. 

As for the resurrection of the just, it is proved by half a 
score of arguments: the argument by reductio ad absurdum, 
founded on the pernicious consequences of the contrary 
thesis; the argument of tradition which rests upon the 
doctrine and the constant teaching of the apostles ;? the argu- 
ment ad hominem, drawn from the inward, spontaneous, irre- 
sistible conviction of the faithful themselves ;3 the argument 
of the meritorious cause, based on the truth that Jesus Christ 


(A) Meaning of the word taypa.—We know that taypa was often used to 
signify ‘‘a body of troops,”’ especially “‘ the Roman legion ” (references in 
Thayer, A Greek-English Lextcon of the N.T.4). But it was also frequently 
employed in the sense of “‘ order, rank, class, series,” etc. Sextus Empiricus 
speaks of the class of atheists (Adv. Math., ix, 54: €x rot rdyparos THv aléwr), 
Josephus places the Sadducees in the second rank of the Jewish sects (Bed/., 
II, viii, 2, 14: Laddoveaior S€ ro Sevrepov tdyua), and Theophylact inserts 
taypa between two words which signify conduct and kind of life (7x 1 Cor., 
vii, 20: év olw Bliw Kal év oiw Taypart Kat moArtevpatt). The two 
meanings can apply here, and perhaps the military interpretation harmonizes 
better with the habitual language of St Paul, especially if, as St Clement 
would like to prove (Ad Corinth., i, 37, 41), the Chief alone can constitute 
atayua. However this may be, we can consider in a tadyya both the 
order of time and the order of dignity. It is the latter that the Apostle 
seems to have chiefly in view. Although all the just rise from the dead in 
Christ, and by Christ, there are among the resurrected different categories 
corresponding to the various grades of merit and of glory. Cf. 1 Cor. xv, 
41-42: Alia clarttas solis, alia claritas lunae, et alia clarttas stellarum. 
Stella a stella differt tn claritate sic et resurrectio mortuorum. But beside : 
the order of dignity, the order of time seems also indicated in the context, 
in such a manner, however, that the attention of the Apostle refers exclusively 
to the przorzty of Jesus Christ as the firstfrutts > Unusqutsque tn suo ordine, 
primitiae Christus ; deinde, etc. 

(B) How many orders in the resurrection ?—A special and unique category 
is formed by Jesus Christ, who shares with no one as firstfruzts (amapxy), 
and thus unites the priority of time with the priority of dignity. The risen 
just (ot rod Xporod), emerging together from the tomb, yet after Christ 
(€eura), constitute the second class, divided into distinct groups. Some 
commentators see a third category indicated in the words elra 70 rédos. 
They understand by réAos “‘ the end of the resurrection”—namely, the 
resurrection of sinners; thus Theodoret (7 cow) ravrwv avdcracts), Cajetan, 
Bengel, Meyer, Grimm, Zeztschr. fiir wiss. Theol., 1873, p. 385, etc. Cor- 
nelius 4 Lapide gives the interpretation of Cajetan the second place without 
expressing his own view. St. Cyril of Alexandria identifies the third class 
of the resurrected with the just already dead before the coming of Christ. 
All this is quite arbitrary, for the expression deinde finis does not by any 
means denote a new order of the resurrected, any more than it indicates an 
interval between the resurrection of the just and the moment when Christ 
offers his Father the homage of his royalty. 

‘st Corsxy, 12-19; “C/.Voly Iypp..133, 134: 

* 1 Cor. xv, 30-32. 2 1 Cor. xv, 29. 


THE LAST THINGS 363 


came to rebuild the ruins wrought by sin and to restore to us 
the blessings lost through the first Adam ;* the argument of 
the exemplary cause, connected with the theory of the mystical 
body and with the solidarity of Christ and the saints;? the 
argument of the seal imprinted within us by the Holy Spirit, 
who, making us his own, binds himself to keep us, body and 
soul, eternally ;? the argument of the earnest-money given by 
this same Spirit, the first instalment of a coming glorious 1m- 
mortality ;* the argument of the temple, the sacred and im- 
perishable dwelling of this Spirit ;> the argument of the first- 
fruits, in other words of grace, the seed of glory ;° the argu- 
ment of the supernatural desire which the Holy Spirit kindles 
within us and which makes us sigh for the glorification of this 
body, associated with the conflicts of the soul and the instru- 
ment of its victories.” 

Many of these arguments are so akin to one another that 
they touch and combine together: they are not so much 
distinct proofs as different aspects of the same proof. What 
is rhetorical in them, we have not to examine; but we must 
be careful not to consider them as philosophical conclusions. 
They are theological inductions in the full force of the term, 
finding their support in the teaching of the Apostle. Taken 
apart from the assertions of Paul, who affirms their premises 
as verities of faith, some of them would seem to rest on a 
begging of the question or to move in a vicious circle. 

The five arguments placed at the head of the list have been 
studied in connection with the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians. The other five, the elements of which are 
scattered through various Epistles, are all based upon the 
supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit. One can say that 
they all come back to this: ‘‘ If the Spirit of him that raised 
up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Jesus 
Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies, 
because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you.’’? Is it because 
the body of the just is his temple? Perhaps. Nevertheless, 
apart from the two texts where the Holy Spirit figures as the 
soul of the mystical body, rather than the guest of an in- 
dividual temple,!° the reasoning of the Apostle takes another 
turn. He says: ‘‘ You are sealed by the Holy Spirit unto 
the day of redemption.’’1_ You are his property, one day he 
will reclaim you for his own; on that day the body, after the 
soul, will be avenged for the outrages of death. The seal of 
which St Paul speaks is imprinted upon us at baptism. This 


to Cor, xv, 21) + Cf ROM. Xi, 13: 


2 1 Cor. xv, 20-23. Cf. vi, 13, 14 and 2 Cor. iv, 14; Rom. viil, 11. 
3 Eph. iv, 30. 4°2 Cor. v, 5:3 Eph. 1,14. 

Str) Cor.evijel0: © Rom. viil, 23. 

7 Rom. viii, 15, 17, 23-26. ® See Vol. I, pp. 133-138. 

® Rom. viil, 11. 10 x Cor. vi, 19 ; 2 Cor. vi, 16. 


11 Eph. iv, 3c. 


364 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


sacramental rite, which incorporates us into the mystical 
body, confers upon us also the ‘‘ earnest of the Spirit,’’* 
another guarantee of eternal blessedness. The earnest is a 
sum advanced ‘‘ on account,’’ as a pledge for the entire pay- 
ment. It is not distinct from the Holy Spirit; it is the Holy 
Spirit, as it were a gift possessed by souls, a gift identical 
in its essence, but susceptible of progress in intimacy and 
perfection. The just, quickened by grace, have received, 
already in this world, the firstfruits of the immortality of 
glory ; they are ‘‘ saved in hope,’’ and the promised salvation 
concerns the body as well as the soul. Paul never establishes 
a rigid line of demarcation between grace and the glory 
which is its tardy but assured florescence. Whoever is grafted 
upon Christ is by that very fact associated with his immortal 
and glorified life. 

The proof derived from desire appears at first a sophism, 
and would be so in fact, if it were a question here of a purely 
natural desire, for there would then be a disproportion 
between the tendency and the end in view. But the Apostle 
assumes and affirms that this desire is a supernatural one, 
created and maintained within us by the Holy Spirit him- 
self. In bringing to our lips that cry of the heart: Abba, 
Father! the Spirit testifies to our adoptive sonship, and 
attests the fact that we are heirs of God and coheirs of Christ. 
But the glory of the resurrected body forms an integral part of 
this heritage. Thenceforth creation’s anxious aspirations are 
no longer wanted to foretell our return to original immortality : 
““ We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we 
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the [consum- 
mated] adoption of sons, and for the [glorious] redemption 
of our body.’’* The desire given us by grace will not be 
illusory ; for why should the Holy Spirit put within our hearts 
an aspiration which he cannot or will not satisfy? 


3. St Paul affirms, on several occasions, that the just, who 
shall be witnesses of the parousia, will not die. Hence he 
never says, ‘‘ All the just shall rise from the dead,’’ but 
*“ The dead who are in: Christ shall rise.’’?? Sometimes he 
presents his thought under this dilemma: ‘‘ Either we shail 
rise or we shall be changed.’’* He starts from the principle 
that ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’’® 
Flesh and blood mean always to. him human nature, in so far 
as it is weak, changeable, ahd perishable, especially as op- 
posed to the divine nature, which is eternal, unchangeable, and 
incorruptible. His point here, therefore, is not, as certain 


* 2 Cor. i, 22; v, 5 (6 Sods hyiv rov dppaBdva 700 IIvevparos) ; Eph. i, 14 
(6 €orw dppaBay ris KAnpovoplas Hudcy). 

* Rom. viii, 24. ® 1 Thess. iv, 16. 

“1 Cor, xy, $2, * 1 Cor. xv, 50 


THE LAST THINGS 365 


Fathers thought, that nothing impure will enter into the 
kingdom of heaven, nor that the flesh will have no part in 
the glorious resurrection, as many modern interpreters think, 
thus adding a doctrinal error to a fault of exegesis. Paul 
teaches that the body of the just, in order to enter into glory, 
needs transformation. And this transformation, which he has 
described minutely for the dead who are restored to life, is 
equally necessary—and still more mysterious perhaps—for 
the living whom death has spared. Here is his message 
from the Lord himself to the Thessalonians : 

We who are alive, we who remain unto the parousta of the Lord, shall 
not rise before those who sleep [the sleep of death]. For the Lord him- 
self with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and at the 
sound of the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead 
{who are] in Christ shall rise first ; then we who are alive, who are left, 


shall be rapt together with them into the clouds of the air to meet Christ ; 
and so shall we be always with the Lord.* 


From this revelation, which is not at all obscure provided it 
be read without dogmatic prejudices, three truths follow : 
Those who died in a state of grace (ot vexpot ev Xpicto) 
will rise before the catching up into the air of the just who 
are then alive.—The resurrected dead and the living will be 
caught up together into the air to meet Christ.—All the just, 
the resurrected dead and the living, will be for ever with the 
Lord. 

The Apostle says nothing of sinners, either living or dead, 
but concerns himself only with the just and especially with 
the living at the time of the parousta. The latter will have 
no advantage over their brethren who have died, but they 
must themselves be the object of a glorious transformation 
in order to enjoy eternally, unchangeably, and persistently 
the society of the glorified. If it were otherwise, would not 
their lot be a deplorable one? Paul had no need to insist 
upon a doctrine which the converts of Thessalonica did not 
doubt. 

He returns to it subsequently in order to reply to the doubts 
of the Corinthians: ‘‘ Behold, I tell you a mystery. We 
shall not all die, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the 
trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incor- 
ruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible 
[body] must put on incorruption, and this mortal [body] 
must put on immortality.’’? St Paul announces that he is 
going to unveil a mystery, something hidden and mysterious 
(uvoripiov). The mystery consists in the fact that even 
the just, who have been spared by death, must be trans- 
formed, as truly as the just who died in Christ.—This trans- 
formation, common both to the living and the dead, will take 


1 Thess. iv, 15-17. * + Cor. xv, §1-53. 


366 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


place instantaneously and simultaneously, at the first blast 
of the trumpet announcing the parousia.—The reason for 
this necessary transformation is that ‘‘ flesh and blood cannot 
inherit the kingdom of God, neither corruption incorrup- 
tion.’’ Corruption and incorruptibility are two contradictory 
and consequently incompatible things. Therefore this cor- 
ruptible body must cease to be corruptible and this mortal 
body must cease to be mortal. It is in this that the trans- 
formation consists. 

To put on immortality without experiencing the terrors of 
death is an enviable privilege. The Corinthians, knowing 
by the teaching of Paul in his first Epistle that this will really 
be the lot of the just who shall be found on the earth at the 
moment of the parousia, began to desire it. The Apostle 
does not blame them for it, for this desire springs from the 
very depths of our nature: 


For which cause we faint not ; but though our outward man perish, 
yet the inward man is renewed day by day ... 

For we know if the tent in whicl! we dwell on earth be dissolved, that 
we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in 
heaven. 

For this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon [over our earthly 
tent] with our house that is from heaven; yet so that we be found 
clothed, not naked. 

For we also, who are in this tent, do groan, being burdened ; because 
we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon [with immortality] over 
{our aoe body], that that which is mortal in us may be swallowed 
up of life. 


Now he that maketh us for this very thing is God, who hath given us 
the earnest of the Spirit. 


It is almost impossible to translate this passage without 
commenting upon it more or less, so full is it of ideas. The 
difficulty rises first from a want of harmony in the metaphors, 
since Paul pictures our body now under the figure of a 
garment and now under that of a house, and sometimes 
blends the two metaphors together; but the difficulty is due 
also to other causes. This is a case in which we must have 
recourse to the principle of exegesis, which says that what 
is obscure is to be explained by that which is clear. Now 
the two following points seem to be indubitable : ‘‘ The tent 
of our earthly house’’ denotes the corruptible body, which 
is here the abode of the soul.— We would not be unclothed 
or stripped of this body, abject though it be; we fear for our 
soul a nakedness contrary to its nature and aspirations; we 
desire consequently to put on our celestial garment without 
quitting our terrestrial one. Such is the exact value of the 
Greek word, untranslatable in French. 

To what does this heavenly garment correspond? What 
means the dwelling which is eternal in heaven? Here the 


2 Cor. iv, 16; v, 1-5. 


THE LAST THINGS 367 


controversies begin. Let us at the start reject unhesitatingly 
an hypothesis advanced by a small number of heterodox 
exegetes and even by one or two Catholic commentators. 
According to this, the just receive at baptism the germ of a 
glorious body which develops here on earth through the use of 
the sacraments, especially through that of the Eucharist ; this 
temporary body follows the soul after death and will be 
subsequently exchanged, at the moment of the universal resur- 
rection, for the definite final body. There is not a trace in 
St Paul of this strange conception, The just, at death, de- 
part from the body and, on rising from the dead, take again 
their body, which is then transfigured ; there is nowhere a sug- 
gestion of an intermediate body between the perishable body 
and the glorified body. 

This hypothesis being discarded, two opinions confront us. 
According to one, the spiritual habitation denotes metaphoric- 
ally the glorified body ; according to the other, it designates 
celestial glory. The first interpretation is the more common. 
Since ‘‘ the earthly tent’’ represents the mortal body, is it 
not natural that ‘‘ the heavenly house ’’ should stand for the 
glorified body? Doubtless we do not actually possess it 
immediately after death, as the conditional proposition of 
the Apostle would seem to indicate; but we do possess it 
thenceforth ideally, and it can even be said that we have a | 
right to it; we possess it, not with the relative certainty 
of hope, but with the full and absolute certainty of a claim 
that has to be paid. Now the Scriptures very often express 
the certainty of a coming good by a verb in the present tense. 
The only serious difficulty is that in reality we do not put on 
the glorified body over the mortal body: these are not two 
entirely distinct things; the material elements are common 
to both; only, the mode of being differs. This difficulty does 
not exist in the second theory. Here the holy soul really 
puts on the celestial glory as soon as the mortal body is 
separated from it; and the just who witness the parousia 
will put on.this same glory over their real body, of which they 
will never have been divested. The allegory is therefore 
harmonized and Paul’s language is strictly exact. If we 
die before the parousia, we shall have our vestment of glory 
immediately ; if, on the contrary, we live to the last day, the 
glory will envelop us like a royal cloak according to the desire 
which the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts, and so what is 
mortal in us will be absorbed by the fulness of life. 

There remains a sub-clause, the precise meaning of which 
is much debated. According to the Vulgate, the sense would 
be: We desire to put on the glory over the actual body, st 
tamen vestiti non nudi inveniamur; ‘‘ if nevertheless [at the 
moment of the parousia] we are found clothed [with the 
body], not naked ’’—that is to say, deprived by death of our 


368 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


earthly garment. This is such a natural explanation that it 
is not surprising to see it adopted by so many Fathers and 
ancient and modern commentators. Survival ‘“‘ until the day 
of the parousia ’’ is then presented as an indispensable condi- 
tion for the realization of our desire. But a number of con- 
temporary scholars, in the name of philology, protest against 
so simple an interpretation. In order to safeguard the pro- 
priety of the terms, they propose to translate it as follows: 
We desire to put on the glory over the mortal body, ‘‘ seeing 
that, having been once clothed [with heavenly glory] we 
shall not be found naked, since death will no more have any 
hold on us.’’? The sub-clause no longer expresses the condi- 
tion to be fulfilled in order to realize the wish stated in the 
preceding verse, but rather the very object of the wish or the 
circumstance which makes it desirable. However great may 
be the divergence in this point of detail, the whole idea of 
the passage remains about the same. 

At all events, the Apostle is certain that a glorified and 
immortal body awaits him in heaven, and this prospect 
enables him to confront the tribulations of this life with joy 
and consoles him for seeing the dissolution of his perishable 
body. 

If he experiences the natural desire to live till the parousia, 
it is not just from fear of death, for he knows well that 
nothing can separate him from Christ, the sole object of his 
love; it is on accouunt of the instinctive repugnance which 
we all feel to the thought of undergoing, even for a time, 
the dissolution of man’s composite being. 

Like the faithful in Thessalonica and Corinth, whose wishes 


*2 Cor. v, 3: ef ye nai dvducdpuevot od yupvol edpeOnodueba. The 
Western reading has too little support to have any chance of being authentic. 
And unless the double metaphor “ clothed ” (évSveduevot) and “ naked ” 
(yupvol) is to escape absurdity, it must be taken in the physical, not in the 
moral, sense (clothed with or stripped of virtues or good works). 

The usual exegesis regards od yupvot as a synonym explanatory of évdv- 
odpevot and makes the whole depend on evpeOnodpe8a. But this construc- 
tion has not its exact counterpart in the examples with which it is compared 
to justify it, 1 Cor. iii, 2 (ydAa od Bpdpa) ; Rom. ii, 29 (€v mvevpart ob-ypdp- 
part); 1 Thess. ii, 17 (mpoowdzw od xapdla). Moreover, it obliges us to take 
evdvodpevot adjectivally, which would be possible with the perfect participle 
evdedupevor, but not with the aorist participle, which always keeps its value 
as a participle and, when joined with a verb in the future, acquires the sense 
of the past future ; it becomes then the subject instead of being the attribute. 
This is a difficulty, but is it invincible ? 

In the other explanation: efye has not a dubitative meaning but an affirmative 
under the dubitative form of the indirect style (not sz tamen, but Stquidem, a 
meaning which etye or efye xai really possesses); év8vodpevot = enevdvadpevot 
and the aorist participle agreeing with the future=a past future, ‘when we 
shall have been clothed”’; finally, the negative od qualifies the verb, not the 
adjective, and ovy edpenodueda=ovxérs: “ Once clothed with glory, we no 
longer risk being found naked [#.e., bereft of the body], since death is no more 
to be Seat and that is just what we desire.” This is clear; but is it nota 
truism r 


THE LAST THINGS 369 


he approves and shares, he would like to go, still living, to 
meet the triumphant Christ and enter into a glorious immor- 
tality without passing through the experience of death. 

He does not put forward survival till the parousia as some- 
thing either certain or probable; but he speaks of it as pos- 
sible ; otherwise his desire would be aimless. Moreover, he 
affirms that the author of this desire is the Holy Spirit ; 
which again indicates its possibility. The condition laid down 
for the realization of this desire is expressly stated, if we 
interpret the sub-clause as the Vulgate and ordinary exegesis 
do ; it is at least assumed, if we interpret it as do the majority 
of modern philologists. 

Nevertheless, the wish in question is not so imperative that 
it deprives us of peace and resignation. We know that our 
earthly pilgrimage is an exile far from the Lord, and that to 
depart from this mortal body is to goto the Lord. In order to 
be resigned to this change, in spite of the instinctive desires 
of nature and grace, we need nevertheless courage and in- 
trepidity, feelings with which faith inspires us. In any case, 
we aim at pleasing the Lord, whether present with him or 
absent from him. That is the essential thing; the rest does 
not depend on us.! 


2 Concerning the fate of the last generation of the just, see Vol. I, pp. 76-78. 
The opinion of universal death is more common to-day among theologians, 
perhaps on account of these words from the Catechism of the Council of Trent 
(I, ii, 6): Hutc sententiae quae asserit omnes morituros esse nemine excepto 
Ecclesiam acquiescere ipsamque sententiam magts veritati conventre, scriptum 
reliquit S Hieronymus: tdem sentit et S Augustinus. Neque vero huic 
sententiae repugnant Apostoli verba ad Thessalonicenses (1 Thess. iv,6)... . 
Nam S Ambrosius cum ea explanaret tta inguit. In ipso raptu mors prae- 
veniet, etc.—Unhappily, there are in these lines three serious inaccuracies 
which reduce the proof of authority to nothing : (2) The author of the com- 
mentary cited is not St Ambrose, but Ambrosiaster, a learned layman, 
probably orthodox, but not a doctor of the Church.—(4) St Augustine is 
entirely neutral on the subject (Retract., ii, 33: Aut non mortentur aut... 
mortem non sentient); he is rather favourable to the contrary opinion. 
See Vol.I, p. 77.—(c) The words attributed to St Jerome are not his, but from 
Acacius of Caesarea, quoted by St Jerome (Zpist. 119 ad Minerv., XXII, 
970-971). Here St Jerome is only a reporter: Haec celeré sermone dictavt, 
quid eruditi viri de utroque sentirent loco et quibus argumentis suas vellent 
see sententias vestrae prudentiae exponens (ibid., 978). But elsewhere he 
ets us know his personal opinion (Zf1st.59 ad Marcell., XXII, 587): Hoc 
ex ipsius loct continentia sciri potest, quod sancti gut in adventu Salvatorts 
fuerint deprehensi in corpore, in ttsdem corportbus occurrent et ; ita amen ut 
inglorium et corruptivum et mortale gloria et incorruptione et 1m mortalitate 
mutetur, ut qualia corpora mortuorum surrectura sint in talem substantiam 
etiam vivorum corpora transformentur. It would be impossible to be 
more explicit. 


Il, 24 


370 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


II1I—Tue Day or THE LorpD 


1. The Parousia. 2. The Last Judgement. 3. Separation of the Good 
from the Wicked. 


1. Parousta, literally ‘‘ presence,’’ further meaning ‘‘ the 
coming,’’ is a technical term used in the New Testament to 
denote the second advent of Jesus Christ, which is called 
also ‘* the revelation ’’ or ‘‘ apparition ’’ or ‘‘ the Day of the 
Borde: 

At the time when St Paul wrote his Epistles, parousia was 
the name given to the solemn visit of a sovereign or of some 
great personage, particularly of the emperor himself. Poly- 
bius mentions in this sense the parousia of king Antiochus, 
and an inscription of the third century before Christ informs 
us that the parousia of Saitapharnes to Olbia cost the in- 
habitants nine hundred gold pieces.? 

Such an extraordinary circumstance, celebrated by festivals, 
games, and sacrifices, and perpetuated by statues, founda- 
tions, commemorative medals, and sometimes by the estab- 
lishment of a new era, was of a nature to strike the imagina- 
tion of nations and left a lasting impression on the memories 
of men. No expression, therefore, was more appropriate for 
the triumphal return of Christ, who comes to inaugurate 
his reign. 

The parousia borrows its dramatic setting and colouring of 
the Day of Jehovah, of which it is the typical realization, 
largely from the prophets. In both instances the Day of the 
Lord closes the history of humanity and marks the end of the 
ages. In both cases, it appears near without it being possible 
to say whether it is so in reality or whether the illusion is 
due to the prophetic style employed, which eliminates all per- 
spective and projects remote events upon the same plane. 
In both occurrences it arrives escorted by a formidable dis- 
play, announces its coming by cosmical convulsions, and 
leaves all nature purified and renovated. Finally, in both the 


* Parousia and synonyms.—(a) Iapoveia (Christ’s or the Lord’s), 
1 Thess. ii, 19 ; iii, 13 ; iv, 15; v, 23; 2 Thess. ii, 1,8; 1 Cor. xv, 23; Jas, 
7,8; 2 Pet. i, 16; in, 4, 12; 1 John ii, 28 ; Matt. xxiv, 3727, 375 30.6 ene 
word is also used for the coming or the presence of other persons ; Stephanas 
(1 Cor. xvi, 17), Titus (2 Cor. vii, 6, 7), Paul (2 Cor. x, 10; Phil.2,°26/-aie res 
Antichrist (2 Thess. ii, 9).—(4) ‘Hepa (the Lord’s), 1 Cor. i, 8; Vissi 
2 Cor. i, 14; 1 Thess. v, 2; 2 Thess. ii, 2; (Christ’s), Phil. i, 6, 10 ; 11,16; (the 
Day by antonomasia), 2 Thess. i, 10 ; 2 Tim. i, 12, 18; iv, 8 (4 pu€pa é€xeivn) ; 
1 Cor. ili, 13 (%) yap nuépa SnAdoet). Cf. Rom. ii, 16 and xiii, 12; 1 Thess. 
v, 4. Elsewhere, Acts ii, 20; Heb. x, 25 (BAémere eyyiloueay THY Twépav) ; 
1 Pet. ili, 10, 12; Apoc. xvi, 14 (rob @cob).—(c) ’Emddveca, 1 Tim. vi, 14; 
2 Tim. i, 10; iv, 1, 8; Titus ii, 13. Note 2 Thess. ui, 8 (ri émpaveta THS 
ses avrob).—(d) ’AmoxdAvpus, 1 Cor. i, 7; 2 Thess. i, 7; cf. 1 Pet. i, 
7, 135 ly, 3. 

* Polybius, Azst., xviii, 31 ; Dittenberger, Syllog.®, No. 226, 1. 85, 86. 
Cf. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, Tiibingen, 1908, p. 270. 


THE LAST THINGS 371 


Saviour presents himself as Judge, Saviour, and Avenger ; 
a universal Judge, Saviour of his own, Avenger of the 
oppressed. But unlike the Day of Jehovah, the parousia is 
always closely connected with the resurrection of the dead; 
its character is more spiritual; it is Christ, rather than God, 
who pronounces the judgement. 

In every prophecy and apocalypse the part of the type, the 
symbol and allusion to former prophecies is difficult to make 
out. The prophecy is not to be explained like an historical 
narrative, nor the apocalypse like an ordinary prophecy. This 
literary form allows the use of traditional symbols which it 
would be dangerous to take literally, and the meaning of 
which, conditioned by a series of predictions still more ancient, 
remains always mysterious and fluctuating. Like all similar 
compositions, Paul’s apocalypse is an echo of other apoca- 
lypses. There is found in it a multitude of reminiscences of 
Daniel, Isaias, Ezechiel, and the Psalms, with various 
features borrowed from the eschatological discourse of Jesus. 
Moreover, it has a special difficulty, since it refers to an oral 
teaching the purport of which we do not know. 

The exterior setting of the parousia in St Paul is almost 
the same as in the Synoptists. The blast of the trumpet 
summons the dead and the living to the great tribunal of the 
human race, the Son of Man approaches with the angels for 
his escort and the clouds for his chariot; a single dramatic 
stroke changes in the twinkling of an eye the face of the 
whole world and fills the spectators with surprise, alarm, 
and consternation. The physical transformation of the 
universe, so emphasized in the eschatology of the prophets, 
is scarcely alluded to by St Paul, and we find in him no 
certain trace of the conflagration, so dramatically described 
in the First Epistle of St Peter.} 


The following are the features relating to the final call and to the trium- 
phal cortége. 

(A) Zhe final call.—(a) The command (1 Thess. iv, 16: adrés 6 Kupuos 
ev xedevopatt KataBycerat dm’ ovpavot). KéXevoua is the cry used to rouse 
up animals (horses, dogs, etc.) or men (sailors, soldiers, etc.). Who utters 
this cry? Is it God giving Christ the signal for the parousia (Tillmann, Dre 
Wrederkunft Christi, p. 152)? Is it Christ assembling the angels of his 
escort (Wohlenberg, 7hessalonicherbriefe, Pp. 100) ?—(6) The votce of the 
archangel (1 Thess. iv, 16: €v dwvR adpyayyéAov). It is commonly believed 
that this is Michael ; cf. Dan. x, 21; xii, 1.—(c) The sound of the trumpet 
(1 Cor. xv, 52: €v TH €oxdtn odAmuyyt.—1 Thess. iv, 16: ev odAmtyyt @eos). The 
trumpet usually announced theophanies, Ex. xix, 13, 16; Ps. xlvi, 6; Isa. 
xxvii, 13; Joel ii, 1; Soph. i, 16; Zach. ix, 14, But here it sounds the 
summons of the dead. Cf. Matt. xxiv, 31. It is called /ast, not that it is 
the last of a series, but because it will sound at the Jast day. It is called 
the trumpet of God because it proclaims the command of God. Estius sagely 
remarks: Significatur metaphorice signum aliquod untversale, evidenttsst- 
mum et praeclarissimum, quo velut instrumento divinae virtutis omnes 
mortut suscitandt sunt ad vitam et convocands ad tribunal judticts Christe, 
guomodo tubae sonitu solebat olim populus convocars. Cf. St Augustine, 
Epist. ad Honorat., p. 34. 


uP: THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Of the three preliminary signs of the parousia—besides the 
physical phenomena—the final conversion of the Jews is 
peculiar to Paul; the general apostasy is common to all, and 
it is probably so with the appearance of Antichrist, although 
the Synoptists speak of a great number of false Christs, and 
although St John seems to divide up among several persons 
the role assigned by St Paul to the Man of sin, the Son of 
perdition. As St John informs us that the coming of one 
Antichrist only formed part of the teachings of the apostles, 
it may be admitted that the many antichrists were regarded 
as the lesser agents or precursors of the great adversary.’ 


2. Having already spoken of the two points peculiar to St 
Paul’s apocalypse—the mysterious obstacle which is opposed 
to the immediate manifestation of Antichrist and the privi- 
lege enjoyed by the just who shall witness the parousia—we 





(B) The cortége.—(a) Angels (2 Thess. i, 7: per’ ayyéAwy Suvdpews avrod). 
It is the usual escort of God and of Christ the Judge, Matt. xxv, 31 ; Mark 
vili, 38; Luke ix, 26, etc —(4) Saints (1 Thess. ili, 13: PETE TaYTWY THY Gyiw 
avtod). The allusion to Zach. xiv, 5 (kat fee xvpios 6 Oecs kat mavres of 
dywot per’ abrod) seems evident. But from the fact that in the text of 
Zacharias and elsewhere the saints denote angels, we cannot conclude (with 
Liidemann, Bornemann and other exegetes) that it is the same in St Paul. 
The word saints, used to designate the ange/s, is unexampled in the N-T, 
The reference is, therefore, to the souls of a// the elect (7avtwv), who accom- 
pany the Saviour and reassume their bodies at the given signal.—(c) Clouds 
(1 Thess. iv, 17) form part of the setting of the parousza (Matt. xxiv, 30; 
xxvi, 64; Mark xiii, 26 ; xiv, 62 ; Luke xxi, 27) as of theophanies in general. 
—(d) Fire also (1 Cor. iii, 13: €¥ mupt dmoxadvmrerat.—2 Thess. i, 8: 
év mrupt droyds SiSovros éxdixnow). Cf. Acts vii, 30 (the burning bush) ; 
Ex. xix, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18 (apparition on Sinai, with the principal character- 
istics of theophanies : trumpet, votce, cloud, fire). 

1 The preliminary signs of the last day are: 

(a) The general apostasy (2 Thess. ii, 3: €av yn €ABn 9 amooracia mp@Tov). 
This is not a political defection, as several Fathers believed, for here St Paul 
keeps constantly to the religious ground ; nor is it a heresy in the heart of 
Judaism, as several modern commentators think, refuted by Tillmann (Dze 
Wiederkunft Christs, 1909, pp. 131-133), but an apostasy from the Chrtstian 
faith, foretold by Jesus Christ in his great eschatological discourse (Matt. 
xxiv, 12; Luke xviii, 8) and announced also by St Paul (2 Tim. iii, I-10).— 
(b) Antichrist (2 Thess. ii, 3, 8: ‘ the son of perdition, the man of sin’’). 
This is not Satan in person, for he is expressly distinguished from Satan 
(2 Thess. ii, 9), nor Belial (2 Cor. vi, 15), whatever Bousset says of him (Der 
Antichrist in der Ueberlieterung des Judentums, des N.T. und der alten 
Kirche, Gottingen, 1895, p. 99). He isa personal being as his titles indicate, 
in particular his character as an adversary of Christ. The apostasy which is 
spoken of above will prepare the way for Antichrist (2 Thess. ii, 7), who in 
his turn will spread abroad the spirit of seduction and error (2 Thess. ui, 
10-12). H. Kellner (Jesus von Nazareth und seine Apostelim Rahmen der 
Zeitgeschichte, Ratisbon, 1908, p. 320) has brought up again the hypothesis 
of Grotius, which identifies Antichrist with Caligula and the ‘* obstacle ”’ 
with Petronius, governor of Syria. But Caligula had been dead about ten 
years when St Paul wrote. As for the obstacle which is opposed to the appear- 
ance of Antichrist, see Vol. I, pp. 81-83.—(¢) The conversion of the Jews. 
See Vol. I, pp. 265-267. 


THE LAST THINGS 373 


shall add only a few words concerning the last judgement, 
as to which Pauline theology presents nothing very original. 
The judgement is so closely connected with the parousia that 
it is impossible to separate those two scenes of the same 
drama, which the Church has united in one article of the 
Creed. Jesus Christ comes and he comes to judge the quick 
and the dead. The apostles did not fail to insert this dogma 
in their first discourse to pagans, and St Paul does so with 
more insistence than the others because, at least at the begin- 
ning, he gave the parousia-very great prominence. 

The judgement will be universal and based upon works: 
‘““ We must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, 
that everyone may receive retribution for what he hath done 
in the body, whether good or evil.’’! This refers solely to 
adults, who alone are capable of moral actions ; and in spite 
of the authority of St Augustine, who has carried with him 
as usual many interpreters, it is impossible to include little 
children in their number; but the absolute universality of the 
judgement was expressed by a formula which is free from 
ambiguity: ‘‘He will come to judge the living and the 
dead,’’* both the risen dead and the living witnesses of the 
parousia. In whatever way we interpret the words living 
and dead, there is no middle point between these two terms, 
which necessarily include all mankind without exception. It 
follows from this that the saints, who are assessors of the 
sovereign Judge, will also be judged. Moreover, ‘‘ we shall 
judge angels’”’ ;? and not only the fallen angels, but the 
angels who remained faithful; the wicked angels do not 
receive this name without some qualification. To conclude, 
the judgement will have the same extent as the merit and 
the demerit. Whether angels or men, all those who have 
been put to the test, whether they have come out of it victors 
or not, will have to appear before the judgement seat of God. 

The catechumens were taught that the judgement will be 
‘* eternal ’’* in its effects and consequences—that is to say, it 
will be final and irrevocable. In regard to the just, St 
Paul could not be more explicit ; they will be “ for ever with 
the Lord ”’ ;° the eternal life which they have secured makes 
them safe from a second death. The sentence pronounced 
against the wicked is no less unchangeable; they are doomed 
to “ eternal perdition.’’® Those who pretend that St Paul, 
after the Epistles to the Thessalonians, changed his mind, 
have given no proof of this supposed retractation. In all the 
apostolic writings, death is represented as the limit of fears 


2 Cor. v, 10. Cf. Rom. ii, 16 ; xiv, 10; Acts xvii, ai. 

* 2 Tim. iv, I (xpivew Cavras xal vexpovs) ; 1 Pet. iv, Sa A Cteex. 42. 
* 1 Cor. vi, 3 (ovK ofdare Sri dyyédous Kpwotpev 4p 

* Heb..vi;.2.. Seep, 31-32: 

° 1 Thess. iv, 17: Kat odtws mdvrote adv xuply éoopeba. 

* 2 Thess. i, 9: oftwes Sixnv ricovaw dAcOpov aidviov, 


374 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


and hopes. The fate of both the elect and the rejected is, 
therefore, no more subject to fluctuations and vicissitudes. 


3. A passage from St Paul recalls the pathetic separation 
of the good from the wicked described by St Matthew and 
outlined by St John in the Apocalypse. It isa rhythmical and 
lyrical passage, a sort of hymn or Psalm, which binds the 
principal features of Christian eschatology together, as it 
were, into a sheaf. The Apostle tells the converts to console 
them for the persecutions which they are enduring. 


It is a proof of the just judgement of God, who would make you 
worthy of the kingdom of God for which you suffer ; 

For it is a just thing with God to repay tribulation to them that trouble 
you, and to you, who are troubled, rest with us ; 

When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with the angels 
of his power, in a flame of fire ; 

To punish them who know not God and who obey not the Gospel of 
our Lord Jesus Christ : 

They shall suffer punishment in eternal destruction, far from the face 
of the Lord and from the glory of his power ; 

When he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be made wonder- 
ful in all them who have believed.* 


Paul proves the necessity of the judgement by the spectacle 
of the actual world, in which the innocent are so often victims. 
This momentary derangement of the moral order must sooner 
or later cease. The world to come will be the reverse of the 
present one; then sorrow and shame will be the portion of 
the persecutors, while rest and glory will be given to the 


1 2 Thess. i, 5-10. As we read this passage we see that it is filled with 
biblical allusions and reminders. As this fact closely concerns the inter- 
pretation, it is well to point out some similarities : (A) The just judgement 
of God (i, 5: évderypa ris Sixatas Kpicews Tod Oeod). Cf. Ecclus. LEX os 
(xpwvet Stxatws xai woijcer xplow).—(B) The judgement of retribution for 
good and evil (i, 6, 7: avraro8obvat rots OAiBovow spas OAthiv Kal tpiv tots 
OAtBopevors avec). Cf. Is. xxxiv, 8 (jpepa Kxploews Kuptou Kal eviavTos 
dvramoddécews) ; xxxv, 4 (xplow dvramo0didwot Kai dvraroddwcet); lxi, 2 ; Ixili, 
4, 7; xvi, 4; Jer. xxvili, 6, 21, 56; Lam. iii, 64 (aodwoets avtots avramddopa) ; 
Abdias 15, etc.—(C) Theophany amidst angels and avenging fire (i.7,8: 
per” dyyéAwy Suvdpews avrot év mupi dioyds). C7. Ex. ili, 2 (ihn ayyedos 
xupiou ev mupt droyos) ; xix, 18; Deut. iv, 11 ; Is. iv, 5; xxix, 16 (PAoE arupos 
xareoiovea) ; Ixvi, 15, 16 (Kuptos ws wip weer . . . arododvar ev Gup@ €xdi- 
Know abrod Kal drocxopaxtopov abrod ev dAoyi mupds* ev yap TH mupt Kuptov 
xpicerar aca % yh); Dan. vii, 9 (6 Opovos adrod dpro€ mupos), etc.— 

D) Punishment of the wicked and those who know not God (i, 8: d8ovros 

exdiknow Tots ph €iddct Bedv Kal tois pi) draxovovow 7H evayyeAiw). Cf. 
Is. lix, 1, 8 (dvranro8dowv dvrandboaw Gveidos Tots vrevavtiots) ; lxvi, 6 (dwt) 
xupiov avraodiSévros avrand8oow Tots dvrixetpévois) ; Jer. x, 25 (Exxeov Tov 
Oupdv cov ent vn Ta pt) eiSdra oe); Ps. xxviii, 6.—(E) Zternal perdition 
of the wicked far from the face of God (i, 9: diknv ticovew ddAcBpov 
aidvuov dd mpoowmov Tod Kupiov Kat dno rhs Sdéns Tis taxvos avtod). 
Cf. Jer. xxv, 12 (exduxtjocs TO éOvos exeivo Kat Ojcopat atrods eis adaviopov 
aidviov); Is. ii, 10 (kpdarecbe eis thy viv amd mpoodmov tod PoBov Kuptov 
Kat ano ths Sdééns THs loxvos atrod) ; ii, 19, 21.—(F) God glorified in his 
aints (i, 10: drav EADn evdogacbivat €v Tots dytois avtod). Cf. Is. xlix, 3 
év oot evdofacbjoopat) ; Ezech. xxvili, 22 ; xxxvill, 23 ; xxxix, 21. 


THE LAST THINGS 375 


persecuted. God subjects us to trial in order to render us 
worthy of the crown; in awarding us that, he performs an 
act of justice, and pronounces a judgement equally just in 
refusing to give the crown to the wicked; in both cases there 
is retribution." It would be impossible to state more clearly 
that the kingdom of God is won by conquest, gained, and 
merited. Certainly, on the other hand, Paul’s thought would 
be travestied, if we supposed that this merit, real and personal 
as it is, can be the fruit of our efforts only. It is God who, 
after having given us the power to deserve it, incites and 
helps us to make use of it, who makes his grace triumph in 
us and who renders us worthy of the kingdom. It is none 
the less true, however, that the merit is ours and creates for 
us a genuine claim upon God. Thus the Apostle writes to 
Timothy : ‘‘ There is laid up for me a crown of justice, which 
the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day; and 
not only to me but to them also that love his coming.’’? The 
crown of ‘‘justice’’ is a reward lawfully gained; and the 
““ Judge,’’ if he is ‘‘just,’’ is bound to award it without 
either arbitrariness or injustice. ‘‘ There is no respect of 
persons with God; for whosoever have sinned without the 
Law shall perish without the Law ;‘and whosoever have sinned 
in the Law shall be judged by the Law; for not the hearers 
of the Law are just before God, but the doers of the Law shall 
be justified.’’> The judgement will be carried out with due 
consideration to the amount of light which men have had 
and according to their works. Hence the day of retribution 
is called, in reference to the wicked, ‘‘ the day of wrath,’’ 
and, in regard to all, ‘‘ the manifestation of the just judge- 
ment of God.’’ It is unnecessary to add that the ‘* works,”’ 
which are to be the standard of the judgement, are not merely 
outward actions; for the eye of the sovereign Judge pene- 
trates into the most secret recesses of the human conscience. 
The punishment of the wicked consists of two things : they 
are banished far from the Lord and deprived of his glory— 
this is what is called to-day the punishment of the lost—and 
they experience in their souls tribulation and anguish; for 
their lot is ruin—eternal death. The recompense of the 
elect is just the opposite : it is tranquillity, repose, and mental 
serenity, caused by the satisfaction of all legitimate desires, 
and it is above all the kingdom of God, union with Jesus 
their Head, in peace and happiness that know no end. ° 
Moreover, human language is inadequate to express these 


1 2 Thess. i, 6, 7: etmep Sixatov rapa Ge@ avramodoivat rois BAiBovow spas 
Oribw Kal bytv rots OABopevors dvecww pel” hydv. f 

® 2 Tim. iv, 8. * Rom. ii, 11-13. 

e 5 , a a a é t ’ a ot ry 

“1 Cor. iv, 5: dwricet 7a Kpumra tod oxdrovs Kal davepwoes ras BovdAas 
Trav kapdiav. Cf. Rom. viii, 27 31 Thess. ii, 4. J 

5 2 Thess. i, 9: Slknv ricovow SAreBpov aiwviov dé mpocurov rod Kuplov. 

® 2 Thess. i, 7. 


376 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


marvels, because ‘‘ the eye of man hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what 
things God hath prepared for them that love him pa ae 
that can be said is that the vision of God without a veil or 
intermediary will replace for us the present dim light of faith; 
we shall see God face to face and we shall know him, even 
as we are known by him.? 


1V—Tue CoNSUMMATION OF ALL THINGS 
1. The Kingdom of God and of Christ. 2. The End. 


1. The kingdom of God, that striking feature of Christian 
preaching in the Synoptists, assumes another character in the 
rest of the New Testament, and particularly in St Paul. This 
is due to a difference of view which is easily explained. At 
the beginning of our era, men believed themselves to be on 
the eve of that day when the prophecies announcing the 
coming of the king born of the lineage of David were to be 
fulfilled, that king who was to make the theocracy of Israel 
flourish again in augmented splendour and to establish on 
earth the reign of peace, justice, and holiness. It was neces- 
sary, therefore, that Jesus, if he wished to be recognized as 
the Messiah, should claim this royalty, explaining, however, the 
spiritual nature of the kingdom which he was coming to found. 
I know, of course, that, with few exceptions, the writings of 
the Rabbis, all of them subsequent to the Gospel, do not 
represent the ‘‘ kingdom of God’’ in direct connection with 


# Cor. i150. 

® y Cor. xiii, 12; 2 Cor. v, 7. These two texts have some resemblance, 
but with differences which should be noted. In 2 Cor. v, 7 (8a wiorews 
nepiraroopev, ov bia elSous), dua indicates not the instrument but the time 
or method ; now we are under the régime (in the state or condition) of faith. 
This classic sense is frequent in the N.T. The word eldos designates not 
the vision (dius) but the appearance, the zmmedtate presence of the object 
contemplated. The Apostle means : “‘ Here below, exiled far from the Lord 
Christ, we see him only by faith txdtrectly ; in heaven, near to the Lord, 
we shall see him face to face.” Note that the reference here is to Christ.— 
In 1 Cor. xiii, 8-11 Paul affirms that the charisma of “knowledge ”’ (yvaats), 
being partial and imperfect, because it is based upon faith, must disappear 
when the state of perfection comes. In xiii, 12 he adds: “ for we see now 
through a glass (8’ éodmrpov) confusedly (€v aiviypart), but then face to 
face.” The word écontpov does not designate those half transparent scales 
of gypsum which were called ‘‘ specular stones ” (8¢omrpov), with which the 
rich adorned their windows ; but, like xaromzpov, the metallic mirrors which 
the ancients used and which reflected only a more or less confused image. 
The Apostle contrasts the direct and distinct vision of the future life with 
the zmdtrect and confused perception characteristic of the present life. In 
order to accentuate this contrast, he concludes: ‘‘ Now I know (ywwdoxw) in 
part, but then I shall know clearly (€mtyvaicouat)—notice the force of this com- 
pound word—even as I am known ”’ by God, from all eternity. My know- 
ledge will not be comprehensive ; but it will be z#¢uztzve, like that of God, 
and consequently incompatible with faith. Faith and vision differ not only 
in degree, but in ktnd. That is why one cannot apply to charity —in the 
state of trial and in the state of glory—what St Paul says of faith. 


THE LAST THINGS 377 


messianic hopes ; they indicate by that term the divine govern- 
ment in the world, and not so much the work of God in men’s 
souls as the free acceptation of the ‘‘ yoke of the Law” by 
the profession of Jewish faith. But one of two things must 
have been true: either the separation of the kngdom of God 
from the kingdom of the Messiah was general among the 
Pharisees of that time, and it was supremely important that 
Jesus Christ should correct, this false idea, so prejudicial to 
the success of his mission; or else it was suggested later to 
the Rabbis by their spirit of hostility to Christianity ; in that 
case it is easier to understand why the evangelical doctrine 
of the kingdom of God raised, from the first, no objection on 
the ground of principle. On any hypothesis, the announce- 
ment of the kingdom was necessarily a fundamental article of 
the preaching of Jesus during that phase of his public 
ministry which was characterized by the teaching by parables 
and which the Synoptists prefer to present to us. 

But this doctrine passes to a subordinate place when the 
Christian idea of the kingdom once becomes realized in the 
Church. If by force of habit they still speak of “ preaching 
the kingdom,’’? as they might speak of ‘“ preaching the 
Gospel,’’ they were careful to avoid misunderstandings and to 
consider the susceptibilities of the Roman authorities, by 
transporting the kingdom outside of the sphere in which the 
interests of this world are active. This is why St Paul, 
although often using that expression, generally gives it an 
eschatological meaning :* ‘‘ The unjust and thieves do not 


1 Cf. Lagrange, Le messianisme chez les Jutfs, 1909, pp. 148-157. 

* Thus in the Acts: i, 3 ; viii, 13 ; xix, 8 ; xxviii, 23, 31. 

* St Paul uses “ the kingdom of God ” in three distinct senses : 

(A) The eschatological kingdom, eternal glory: 

(a) 1 Cor. vi, 9: d8txor Oeod Baorrelav od KAnpovoyraovaw. 

(4) 1 Cor. vi, 10: ody dpmayes Bactrelay Beod KAnpovoyroovor. 

(c) 1 Cor. xv, 50: oap£ xai alua Baorrelavy Beod xAnpovoyoat od Svvarat. 

(d2) Gal. v, 21: of rd rotabra mpacoovres BactAelav Qeod od KAnpovouncovow. 

(e) Eph. v, 5: ovx exet KAnpovoytay ev TH BaciWelg rob Xpiotod Kal Oeod. 

(f) 2 Thess. i, 5: €is rd xatafwwOijvar das THs Bacirelas Too Oeod. 

(g) 2 Tim. iv, 1: rh emipavelav adbrod Kai rv BaotXrelav adrod. 

(4) 2 Tim. iv, 18: odce: es rHv Baowrelav avrod tiv émoupdviov. 

(B) The Church militant, alone or with the Church triumphant. 

(7) 1 Cor. xv, 24: Grav rapadidé thy Baoelav 7H OG Kai rrarpi. 

(7) Col. i, 13: peréornoev eis rav Baotrelay 106 viod rijs dydmns adrod. 

(2) Col. iv, 11: odrot povor avvepyoi eis tiv Bacirelav tod Oeod. 

(7) 1 Thess. ii, 12: Kadoéivros buds eis tHY éavrod Bacirelay Kal Sdéav. 

(m) Acts xx, 25: ev ols 8eAAbov Knptoowy riv BaaiArcElav. 

(C) The spirit of Christianity, the essence of the Gospel. 

(x) Rom. xiv, 17: od ydp €orw % Baowreia To Qeod Bodars Kai mdars 

(0) 1 Cor. iv, 20: od yap ev Adyw % Bactrela rod Oeod. 

The last two texts will be studied later. Perhaps there could be added 
to this list Acts xiv, 22 («at dre dca rrodAav Orbpewv Set Huds elcedADetv els TH 
Bacwrciav rod @eod), if it were certain that the speeches of Paul and Barnabas 
were reported in their actual words. This would be a new example of the 
eschatological meaning, the only one in the Acts. 


378 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


inherit the kingdom of God’’; the impure and idolaters 
““ have no share in the kingdom of Christ and God’; persecu- 
tion ‘‘ renders us worthy of the kingdom of God,’’ which 
““ flesh and blood cannot inherit.’’ From this point of view, 
the kingdom of God begins at the triumphal return of Christ 
and is identified with eternal life. However, it is not always 
so. The kingdom of God also exists already for us; we 
possess it by anticipation, as we possess life, redemption, 
salvation, and glory, in a state of imperfection which does not 
exclude the reality. The vocation by which God calls us 
‘‘to his kingdom and glory’’ can be taken in the escha- 
tological sense, but not the act by which he has “‘ translated 
us to the kingdom of the Son of his love.’’ Sometimes the 
meaning is more doubtful. ‘‘ The kingdom of God,’’ says 
the Apostle, ‘‘is not eating and drinking, but justice and 
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.’’! Here it is evidently not 
the society of the faithful, and still less the society of the 
saints in heaven, that the word kingdom designates; it is 
rather the kingdom of God as it is presented in the writings 
of the Rabbis. The meaning would hardly be changed, if 
we substituted for the word kingdom the Gospel or Chris- 
tianity. Similarly ‘‘ the kingdom of God is not in speech 
but in [works of] power’’;? it does not consist in much 
speaking, after the fashion of the agitators of Corinth, but 
in acting with energy, as Paul proposes to do on his return. 
On the whole, the kingdom of God denotes usually the life 
eternal, where the just will reign with Jesus Christ; more 
rarely the Church militant, where they are fighting for him; 
sometimes the essence and leading principles of the Gospel. 

For St Paul, as well as for the Evangelists, the kingdom of 


* Rom. xiv, 17. The main question is to know if the reference here is to 
the kingdom of God in the individual soul, or to the soctal kingdom of God 
in the Church. Those (like Meyer and Weiss) who defend the first inter- 
pretation, understand by justice, peace and joy the possession and enjoyment 
of these three virtues. The kingdom of God in the soul does not consist 
of eating and drinking (the reading is not Bpdya xai wépya, namely “ food and 
drink,’ but Bpdows Kat aéois, “the act of eating and drinking”): it 
consists of possessing supernatural justice, of enjoying the peace which is a 
result of this justice, and of tasting the joy which is born. of peace. Those 
who hold the second interpretation (Sanday, Cornely, etc.), which appears 
to us the better, explain it thus : The kingdom of God consists, on its positive 
side, in practising justice towards others, justice which would be violated if 
one were to scandalize them and were 4 stumbling-block to them (cf. verses 
13, 15, 20) ; in causing brotherly peace to prevail (cf. verse 19: tfague quae 
pacts sunt sectemur); and in promoting mutual Joy, instead of saddening the 
brethren (cf. verse 15) for the sake of things which are not worth the trouble, 
such as eating and drinking. One sees how much better this second explana- 
tion is adapted to the context. In any case there may be an allusion to the 
coarser ideas of the contemporary Jews concerning the kingdom of God, 
which they conceived after the fashion of a Mohammedan paradise. 

* 1 Cor. iv, 20. Here again we have the socta/ kingdom of God ; not the 
society of the faithful on earth or in heaven, but the principles and laws which 
govern this society. It is, therefore, the Gospel rather than the Church, 


THE LAST THINGS 379 


God is also the kingdom of Christ. The establishment of the 
kingdom 1s the aim of the redemptive mission ; when this aim 
is once attained, the mandate of the Saviour expires: ‘‘ After- 
wards the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom 
to God and the Father, when he shall have brought to naught 
all principality and power and virtue. For he must reign until 
he hath put all his enemies under his feet. And the last 
enemy to be destroyed shall be death. . . . And when all 
things shall be subdued unto him, then the Son also himself 
shall be subject unto his Father, that God may be all in all.’’* 


* 1 Cor. xv: 
aa elra 70 TéAos, Grav mrapadidot rH Deinde finis, cum tradiderit re- 
7 ~ ~ , . ° 
Baoweiav rH Oe nal warpi, Gravy gnum Deo et patrt, cum evacuaverit 


KaTapyjon macav dpynv, Kal macavy omnem principatum, et potestatem 


éfovciav Kal divapw. et virtutem. 

25. Met yap avrov Bacirevew axpr Oportet autem tllum regnare donec 
od 09 mavras Tods €xOpods vad tos ponat omnes inimicos sub pedtbus 
mddas aurod. jus. 

26. “Eaxyaros €xOpos xatrapyeirat 6 Novissima autem inimica destrue- 
@dvaros. tur mors. 


(A) The end of the present world.—it results from verse 23 that the end, 
of which the Apostle speaks, is neither directly nor indirectly the end of the 
resurrection. It is necessary, therefore, to take it in its ordinary sense, 
the only one which could occur to the minds of his readers (the end of the 
present world and the beginning of a new order of things). Cf. Matt. xxiv, 
14 (rére teu 7d TéAOS) ; Mark xiii, 7; Luke xxi, 9; 1 Pet.iv, 7. Twice in 
the Epistles to the Corinthians the end is put in connection with the parousza 
(1 Cor. i, 8; 2 Cor. i, 13, 14). Moreover, to prevent all doubt, Paul defines 
the end by means of two circumstances which can apply only to the con- 
summation of all things : (a) ‘‘ when he shall have delivered up the kingdom 
to his Father ” (a relation of simultaneousness), consequently when his work 
shall be ended ; (4) ‘‘ when he shall have brought to naught all his enemies ”’ 
(relation of priority), consequently when the cycle of conflicts and victories 
shall be closed.—We, in common with the best authorities, adopt the reading 
srapadidot or wapadiég. The reading érav mapaés, which is that of the 
received text and of the Vulgate (cum tradiderit), comes to the same thing, 
provided that only a logical succession is established between the giving up 
of the kingdom to the Father and the end of the world. With the reading 
which we adopt, the end coincides with the giving up, and the two words 67av 
are no longer co-ordinated but subordinated. We must not translate “ when 
he shall have delivered up the kingdom to his Father and brought all his 
enemies to naught,”’ but “ when he shall deliver up the kingdom and when 
he shali have brought to naught,” etc. The two events are successive, at 
least logically, the last one to be announced preceding the other. 

(B) Destruction of his enemtes——The word xarapyetv, employed twice 
in this passage, signifies “‘ to render vain, without force, without effect, without 
value ; to reduce to impotence, to nothingness,” etc. As it is here a question 
of enemies, the reference is to a complete, final victory over them. One 
naturally asks if these ‘‘ enemies ”’ are terrestrial or infernal powers. We 
prefer to see in them all the powers hostile to God, all those which hinder the 
work of Christ, of whatever nature they may be. Observe that death is 
counted in the number of these enemies. In any hypothesis, “ the princi- 
palities, powers and virtues” are not the angels, whose office and ministry 
would then cease (St Augustine, De 7rinit., i, 8; St Thomas and other 
Latin commentators). The case of Col. ii, 15 is entirely different. 

(C) The giving up of the kingdom to the Father.—The kingdom of the 
Word, as Creator, is independent, inalienable and universal ; it includes 


380 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


The end referred to here is not the aim of the resurrection, a 
meaning which the Greek word no more allows than does the 
context ; nor the end of the resurrection, as numerous exegetes 
would have it; it is the completion of the work of Christ and 
the consummation of all things. This point can be considered 
as established, even without appealing to the parallel pas- 
sages, since St Paul indicates clearly and in two ways the 
precise moment which marks that end; on the one hand, the 
delivery of the kingdom to the Father ; on the other, the com- 
plete triumph over all enemies. So long as the conflict was 
being waged, so long as his adversaries were still standing, 
the mission of the Son of God was incomplete. Now that all 
his enemies are prostrate at his feet, not excepting even 
death, which remained the last on the field of battle, his 
dictatorship comes to an end and he gives back to his Father 
the mandate received from him, together with the fruit of 
his victories, as a vassal pays homage to his suzerain for the 
kingdoms he has conquered. 

Such is Paul’s thought, which a simple exposition justifies. 
But the fear of appearing to limit the kingdom of Christ 
suggested to exegetes the most cunningly devised solutions. 
To deliver up the kingdom to the Father would be to make 
the elect who form this kingdom contemplate God; or to 
lead them to submit to God; or to organize the kingdom, 
extirpate its abuses and banish the rebels from it. These 
subtleties are useless. Christ, as God, as Creator, reigns 
for ever with his Father. As man, he keeps the primacy of 
honour and the universal domination which the hypostatic 
union confers upon him. If the Church is a body, he is always 
its head; if it is a religious society, he is always its high 
priest ; if it is a kingdom, he is always its king. From this 
point of view, his kingdom will never end; he will reign for 
ever and ‘‘ we shall reign with him.’’ But he is also head . 
of the Church militant, charged to vindicate God’s honour, 
to lead to victory those who march under his banner, and to 
punish rebels and subdue them. This temporary viceroyalty 
ceases with the functions which constitute it; the mandate of 
a dictator or commander-in-chief expires at the moment when 





all rational beings, angels and men, good and bad. The kingdom of 
Christ, as Redeemer, includes only the elect; even as man, everything 
is subject to him and he exercises his domination over all things; yet 
he reigns, properly speaking, only in the saints. It is this kingdom, con- 
quered by him, which he delivers up to him from whom he holds his mandate. 
He pays homage for it “ to the God and Father” (r@ @e@ xat rarpi), to 
him who is at the same time his God and his Father (cf. Eph. i, 17; John 
xx, 27). Moreover, the delivery of the kingdom to the Father does not at all 
imply the loss or abandonment of the kingdom ; otherwise it would be neces- 
sary to say that God loses or abandons the domain of the universe when he 
delivers it to his Son (Luke x, 22), For the patristic exegesis of these verses, 
see in particular Cornely. . 


THE LAST THINGS 381 


there are no more combats or hostile forces. God, in com- 
mitting this extraordinary power to his Son, took care to 
assign its end: ‘‘ He must reign until he shall have put all 
his enemies under his feet.’’ 

As head of the Church militant, Christ enjoyed a sort of 
autonomy and had an actual authority of his own. His 
mission ended, he has only to take his place far above his 
subjects, but far below God. The cession of his mandate 
is voluntary, as was also the act by which he took it up; 
both are governed by the divine will. St Paul here so 
evidently speaks of Christ as man, that one can hardly con- 
ceive why so many Fathers—even the most illustrious—have 
here thought either of Christ subsisting in the divine nature 
or of the mystical body of Christ. The mystical body of 
Christ is not called ‘‘ the Son of God,’’ nor a fortiori ** the 
Son himself,’’ and it is to do violence to the text to pass 
abruptly from the work of redemption, which is the subject 
of this whole passage, to the relations of the inner life of 
the Word. 


2. The theological sentimentalism of our days, reviving the 
fancies of Origen, prolongs the redemptive action of Christ 
far beyond his triumphal return. According to such thinkers, 
the parousia brings with it only the resurrection and glorifica- 
tion of the just; in regard to the others, nothing ts yet final. 
The end will come later, when Christ shall have completed 
his victory by subjecting all his enemies through persuasion, 
and when God, realizing his plans of love, shall have shown 
mercy to all men. But St Paul cannot be made responsible 
for a system which contradicts a great many of his clearest 
assertions. According to him, the saving will of God, 
universal as it is, still respects the liberty of mar; re- 
demption which is offered to all, is not forced-upon anyone, 
and Christ, the only mediator, associates with his victory only 
those who accept his mediation and are united to him by 
love. And so the partisans of universal restoration see them- 
selves constrained to abandon the ground of theology and 
exegesis, to take their stand upon the foundation of rational 
philosophy, which looks to them more solid. Thither we 
cannot follow them. 

When man has once arrived at the term of his destinies, 
what will become of his former dwelling-place? Only one 
text of the Apostle authorizes us to make some rather un- 
certain inferences on this subject.! It represents the material 
creation as awaiting with anxiety and impatience the glorifica- 
tion of the elect, in which God has promised to make it 
participate. 

Without laying undue stress upon this poetical word- 

1 Rom. viii, 19-22. Cf. Vol. I, pp. 238-239. 


382 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


picture, it is evident that the material creation—for it is of 
this that the Apostle speaks, in contrast to rational things— 
was associated in some measure with the fall of man and 
that it will to some degree participate in his glorification. 
Indeed it now groans over its present condition as over a 
state of violence contrary to its legitimate aspirations, and it 
accepted its subjection to vanity only in obedience to the 
commands of the Creator and on the assurance that this 
odious yoke would be removed from it at the moment of the 
perfect deliverance of man. The whole point is to ascertain 
whether it is a question here of a physical or a moral fall, and 
of a physical or a moral rehabilitation. This isolated text 
does not allow us to reply to this question with certainty. 
The curse pronounced by God upon the earth punished man 
directly, but affected the earth only by reaction. Did the 
soil lose its natural fertility, or did man lose the providential 
aid which protected him from the hard law of toil? And will 
the earth one day find again that wonderful fertility which the 
Sibylline Oracles and other apocryphal writings, not to men- 
tion the compilers of the Talmud, promise it? Of this we 
know absolutely nothing: ‘‘God alone can say what the 
new heavens and the new earth will be. They will certainly 
be what is best adapted to manifest the divine goodness and 
the glory of the blessed. It is, therefore, useless to lose our- 
selves in vain conjectures in a sphere where reason is im- 
potent and revelation mute.’’ These wise words of Scotus 
might have spared theologians many idle fancies and exegetes 
many digressions. We should ask Paul, less than anyone, 
to describe to us the destinies of the material creation. All 
his interest is concentrated on the history of humanity. Even 
this history, in proportion as it progresses, becomes bounded 
within an ever-narrowing horizon; first the human race, then 
the Church militant, then the elect associated with the triumph 
of Christ, and finally, God all in all. 


DETACHED NOTES 


NOTE L—PAUL’S MYSTERY AND PAGAN 
MYSTERIES 


I—BIBLIcAL AND CLASSICAL Mganinc oF MYZTHPION 


N classical writers pvotjpiov means a secret; thus in 
Menander (Fragm. 695): Mvorjpidv cov pa Kateirps 
76 oidy. Everything leads us to believe that this 
was the usual meaning in the spoken language; for 
Cicero, whose letters are embellished with current 
Greek words, writes to Atticus (iv, 18) that their letters are 
so full of mysteria that one does not dare to intrust them to- 
secretaries. Sometimes, by extension, pvorjpiov means the 
secret of a thing, ¢.g., of nature, as in Herodian (VIII, vii, 8): 6 
otpatiwtixds Spxos, ds ore THS “Pwopaiwy apxjs proTnpiov, and 
Marcus Aurelius (iv, 5): 6 Qdvaros Tovovrov ofov yeverts proews 
puotjpiov. Especially was the plural pvornpra used in speak- 
ing of the religious initiations, ¢.g., of Samothrace and Eleusis, 
which imposed upon the initiated the most absolute secrecy : 
for pvotypov comes from pveiv, and prety 75 oTOpa is a Synonym 
for «Aciv rd otdua (to shut the mouth). The fundamental 
idea is, therefore, secrecy and the definition of Theodoret (on 
Rom. xi, 25) is correct: Muorijpidv éore TO py TAT yvwpimov 
GAXG povov Tots Dewpovpévors. 

In the Bible we discover three new meanings which are 
very closely connected with the generic notion. Mystery is 
used especially in speaking of the seeret ef God in reference to 
the salvation of men by Christ, a secret which has ceased to be 
one since now made known. (Rom. xvi, 23: puornpiov 
xpdvors aiwviows cerrynpévor, pavepwHevTos dé vuv.)—Mystery 
signifies also the hidden, symbolical, or typical meaning of an 
institution, of story or picture: Dan. ii, 18, 27, 30 (the mean- 
ing of Nabuchodonosor’s dream); Eph. v, 32 (typical meaning 
of marriage) ; Apoc. i, 20; xvii, 5, 7 (symbolical meaning of 
a thing or name). A mystery is also a thing the working of 
which 1s hidden (2 Thess. ii, 7: the mystery of iniquity) or not 
really known (1 Cor. xv, 51: pvoTnptov tpiv Aéyo). 

The language of philosophy used the word mystery for the 
secret or inner nature of a thing ; in ecclesiastical language it 
subsequently meant a symbolic rite effecting the grace which . 
it signified—especially the three rites (baptism, confirmation, 
and the Eucharist), which are, as it were, the Christian’s 


383 


384 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


initiation—and finally something incomprehensible, too high 
for the light of reason. ‘ 
Thus the following scale of meaning may be laid down: 
(a) The secret of a person or a secret thing. 
(b) The hidden meaning of a type, a symbol, or an allegory. 
(c) The secret of God as to the salvation of mankind. 
) Religious initiations imposing secrecy on the initiated. 
(e) Baptism and the Eucharist, as rites of initiation. 
(f) Sacraments in the sense of a sacred sign, then of an 
efficacious sign. 
(g) Inner nature of a thing, for example of generation. 
(h) A truth incomprehensible to reason. 


2. The word prvorijprov is frequently met with in the transla- 
tion of Daniel in the Septuagint and in the deutero-canonical 
books of the Old Testament; it is also found occasionally in 
the fragments of Symmachus and Theodotion. It is found 
twenty-eight times in the New Testament, twenty-one of 
these being in St Paul. Outside St Paul it is encountered 
only in the Apocalypse (four times), and in a parallel passage 
of the three Synoptists (Matt. xiii, 11; Mark iv, 11; Luke 
Vill, 10). 

The Vulgate renders it generally by mysterium, but sixteen 
times by sacramentum, though the difference in translation 
cannot be justified by the difference of meaning. The eight 
cases where pvorypiov is rendered by sacramentum in the 
New Testament are the following : 

Eph. i, 9: Sacramentum voluntatis (redeeming plan). 

Eph. iti, 3: Notum mihi fecit hoc sacramentum (idem). 

Eph. iii, 9: Quae sit dispensatio sacramenti absconditi 
(idem). 

Eph. v, 22: Sacramentum hoc magnum est (type or 
symbol). 

Col. i, 27: Notas fucere divitias sacramenti (scheme of 
redemption). 

1 Tim. iii, 16: Magnum est pietatis sacramentum (secret ?). 

Apoc. i, 20: Sacramentum septem stellarum (symbolical 
meaning). 

Apoc. xvii, 7: Dicam tibi sacramentum mulieris (idem). 

The ancient Latin version had mysterium throughout. This 
is seen from the six examples from St Paul in the commentary 
of Ambrosiaster and from the four examples from the Epistle 
to the Ephesians in the commentary of Victorinus. The most 
curious thing about this is the fact that St Jerome, in the 
explanation of this Epistle, always retains mysterium except 
in Eph. v, 32: Sacramentum hoc magnum est. It is true 
that the commentary was written in a.p. 386 or 387, and 
that the revision of the ancient version of the Pauline Epistles 
must have been later. 


DETACHED NOTES 385 


3. The significant and most interesting evolution of the 
word sacramentum is of considerable importance to the 
theologian. The study of it cannot find a place here ; besides, 
the elements for it are still wanting, except in Tertullian. 
See A. Réville, Du sens du mot sacramentum dans Tertullien 
(Bibl. de l’école des Hautes-Etudes, sciences relig., vol. 1, 
1889, pp. 195-204); A. d’Alés, La Théologie de Tertuliten, 
Paris, 1905, pp. 321-23, and the monograph of the Abbé De 
Backer (SACRAMENTUM, le mot et l’idée représentée par lus 
dans les ceuvres de Tertullien, Louvain, 1911) which exhausts 
the subject.—The article by H. von Soden, MY2THPION und 
SACRAMENTUM in den ersten zwei Jahrhunderten der Kirche 
(in Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft, vol. xii, 1911, 
pp. 188-227), is instructive but too systematic. A work 
signed by several collaborating authors is announced to 
appear soon in the Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense under the 
title Pour l’histotre du mot SACRAMENTUM. 


LI—ALLEGED BORROWINGS OF ST PAUL FROM THE 
PaGAN MySTERIES 


1. For a long time attempts have been made to explain the 
origin of Christianity by the hidden action of its religious 
environment. This is what is called in Germany die religtons- 
geschichtliche Methode. But the application of the system 
to the theology of St Paul dates back only a few years, at least 
as regards the Hellenized Oriental religions. 

The most prominent representative of the new method is 
at present Reitzenstein. After having prepared the ground 
in his Poimandres, Studien zur griechisch-agyptischen und 
friihchristlichen Literatur, Leipzig, 1904, Reitzenstein seeks 
to prove his thesis in his work Die hellentstischen Mysterien- 
religionen, Leipzig, 1910. It is one of the most erudite of 
books, but also one of the most nebulous and undigested that 
I know. It is made up of a dissertation in which the most 
incongruous ideas assume an obscurity which one could 
almost believe intentional (pp. 1-62); all the rest consists of 
notes and Excursuses (pp. 63-212). The author apologizes 
for meddling, as a philologist, with theological questions 
about which he is notoriously incompetent, and he must be 
praised for having scented the danger, but blamed for having 
knowingly exposed himself to it. The following is the state- 
ment of his thesis (p. 59): ‘‘ However obscure the Apostle 
Paul’s religious development may be, one fact appears always 
increasingly evident: he made a serious effort to become a 
Greek with the Greeks. He must have read their religious 
literature; he speaks its language; he is penetrated with it; 
and the ideas which he draws from it necessarily ally them- 

il. 25 


386 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


selves with the ideas which originate from his new experi- 
ence and go very far beyond those of Judaism.”’ 

As was to be expected, M. Loisy quickly followed in the 
steps of his German forerunner, and developed his ideas in a 
series of articles which appeared from 1911 to I914 in the 
Revue d’histoire et de littér. relig. and were published 
separately under the title Les mystéres paiens et le mystére 
chrétien, Paris, 1919. They can be summed up as follows. 
In order to spread through the world, Christianity had to be 
transformed into an Oriental mystery, which was all the 
easier because at heart the Gospel of Paul is only the mystery 
of a God who has died and risen again in order to save those 
who are united with him by a rite of initiation, as happens in 
the religions of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis. And it is Paul who 
is the author chiefly responsible for this transformation, since 
he makes Christ’s death and resurrection a myth of salvation. 

A few other critics maintain similar ideas, but as most 
of them are not specially concerned with St Paul, here we 
need only refer to Heitmiiller, Taufe und Abendmahl bei 
Paulus, Tiibingen, 1903, and Béhling, Die Geisteskultur von 
Tarsos im augusteischen Zeitalter mit Bertcksichtigung der 
paulin. Schriften, Géttingen, 1913. 


2. Vices of the new system in regard to method—(a) 
Victous circles.—All practices suggested by the religious 
instinct have a certain analogy between them. Thus it is that 
ritual ablution is everywhere considered as a purification and 
that, in the sacred repast which concludes the sacrifice, those 
who partake of it always regard themselves as the guests 
and table-companions of the god whom they honour. There 
is nothing to be drawn from this common fund of religious 
ideas, and it would be an unpardonable fallacy to transform 
these similitudes into proofs of interdependence. The wise 
reflections of Cumont (Les religions orientales, 1906, preface, 
PP. Xi-x1il) should be read on this subject. But, if the fact of 
imitation were proved, first we have to inquire which party - 
was the imitator (tbid., p. xi): ‘‘ After Christianity became a 
moral power in the world, it imposed itself even on its 
enemies. The Phrygian priests of the Great Mother openly 
opposed their festivals of the spring equinox to the Christian 
Easter and attributed to the blood shed at the sacrifice of bulls 
the power of the blood of the Lamb of God.” The Fathers 
accuse the devil, that ape of God, of having inspired these 
parodies of Christian worship. They may be mistaken; yet 
the question of priority must be studied without prejudice. 
But that is what the partisans of the religions geschichtliche 
Methode constantly forget, and it is well to remind them of it. 

(b) Anachronisms.—For one religious form to influence 
another, it is necessary that the first should be anterior to 


DETACHED NOTES 387 


the second, or at least that they should be contemporaneous. 
Now a contact between infant Christianity and Mithraism, 
for example, is a priori so improbable that it can be rejected 
unhesitatingly. Mithras, that barbarous god, carried about 
the world by slaves and soldiers, acquired a place in the 
Roman pantheon under Commodus and attained his highest 
prominence in the third century. However, in a.p. 248, 
Origen (Contra Celsum, vi, 23) treats Mithraism as an 
obscure sect and a negligible quantity. Organized in little 
autonomous groups of at most a hundred adepts, from which 
women were excluded, it never aimed at universality. Left 
to itself, it soon disappeared in indifference and oblivion. It 
cannot be claimed with any degree of probability that Paul 
borrowed anything from it. Such is the opinion of Cumont 
(Les religions orientales, p. xv), of Harnack (Mission und 
Ausbrettung des Christentums*, Leipzig, 1906, vol. ii, 273), 
and of Toutain (Les cultes paiens dans l’empire romain, vol. 
li, Paris, 1911, pp. 150-59). Cf. A. d’Alés, Mithra in the 
Dict. apol. de la foi cathol., fasc. xiv, 1918. 

It would be a still more intolerable anachronism, or rather 
a purely imaginative one, to explain the meaning and the value 
of Christian baptism by the repugnant rite of the sacrifice of 
bulls (taurobolium), practised in honour of Cybele and Attis, 
of which Prudentius (Peristephanon, x, 1011-50) has left us a 
detailed description. In fact the taurobolium (i) is not a 
ceremony of initiation; (ii) it is not considered as a new birth 
or as a pledge of eternal life; (iii) it is of a relatively recent 
date and, far from having influenced Paul and the first 
Christian writers, may very well have itself been influenced 
by Christianity. Cf. Lagrange, Attis et le christianisme, in 
the Rev. bibl., 1919, p. 419. 

But the most shocking anachronism is the attempt to prove 
Paul’s dependence on Oriental religions by the Hermetical 
Books and the Magical Papyri as Reitzenstein notably does. 
The Magical Papyri are not anterior to the third or fourth 
century of our era, although they no doubt contain more 
ancient documents. As for the Hermetical Books, they are 
also, in their present form, of the fourth century, or, at the 
earliest, of the third. Cf. Ménard (Hermés Trismegiste?, 
Paris, 1867), and Kroll (Die Lehren des Hermes Trismegistos, 
Miinster i. W., 1914).—Stock, Hermes Trismegistus (in 
Encycl. of Religion and Ethics, vol. vi, 1913), thinks that 
they were composed between 313 and 330, for Lactantius is 
the first to quote them. He gives this opinion of them 
(p. 626): ‘‘ Take Plato, the Stoics, Philo, Christianity, Gnos- 
ticism, Neo-platonism, Neo-pythagorism, and mix them all 
together, throwing in a strong dose of Egyptian ideas, and 
you will have something resembling Hermes Trismegistus, as 
we possess it.’’ To seek for the source of Paul’s thought in 


388 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


these hybrid compilations of uncertain date and origin is 
certainly not a good method. Is it not enough to doom a 
thesis to ridicule to support it by such arguments? For 
further details see our article St Paul and Paulinism in the 
Diction. apol. de la fot cathol., fasc. xvili, 1922. 

(c) False reasonings.—We shall point out only two of the 
most common, for to treat of them all would require too much 
space. 

(i) People often reason as if they knew the Oriental 
religions as they might have been known by St Paul. Now, 
except for the religion of the Mother of the gods, which has 
very little similarity to the Apostle’s doctrine, all the docu- 
ments which we possess are later than the first century of 
our era. It is the Golden Ass of Apuleius, that satirical and 
licentious romance writter in the second half of the second 
century, which is our principal and almost unique source of 
information, outside the Church Fathers, for the study of the 
mysteries of Isis. Curious and superstitious as he was, 
Apuleius may very well have had himself initiated into those 
mysteries ; but in his grotesque recital it is not easy to dis- 
tinguish between truth and fiction, between sincere piety and 
persiflage. In any case, we are already far from the early 
Church, and a relation of dependence of the latter on the 
former, if it really existed, might be indeed reversed. 

(ii) Or else men build a coherent and well-arranged religious 
system on the meagre information at our disposal, by filling 
up the gaps in our knowledge, by interpreting obscure data, 
and by devising agreements between these diverse elements. 
Then they compare this artificial creation with Paul’s 
theology, and are surprised to find in it resemblances which 
they themselves have put there. In a popular pamphlet, 
Briickner (Der sterbende auferstehende Gotthetland in den 
orient. Relig. und ihr Verhdltnis zum Christentum, 1908) fur- 
nishes us a typical example of this. But Loisy (Les Mystéres 
paiens et le Mystére chrétien, Paris, 1919) goes far beyond 
him. Pére Lagrange critically discusses this work in the 
Revue biblique, xxix, 1920, pp. 420-446. 


3. St Paul and pagan mysteries.—The question is not, 
whether the Apostle was or was not acquainted with the 
religious initiations called mysteries. It is impossible for 
him to have been ignorant of the famous mysteries of Eleusis, 
and it may indeed be conceded that he had a more or less 
perfect knowledge of the Oriental pairs whose cult was 
beginning to spread quietly through the Roman empire: Isis 
and Osiris, Cybele and Attis, the Dea Syria and Adonis, 
and even, perhaps, the cult of Mithras imported from Persia. 
The question is, whether and how far he was influenced by 
them. 


DETACHED NOTES 389 


In view of Paul’s aversion to everything which savours of 
the adoration of idols, an intentional and deliberate imitation 
on his part of pagan mysteries is most improbable; but he 
may have been unconsciously influenced by them ahd have 
adopted their language to express his own ideas. It is a 
question of fact, to be studied without prejudice by a com- 
parison of texts. 

Now we notice at the outset that the vocabulary of the 
mysteries is completely foreign to St Paul, even in what 
relates to the mysteries of Eleusis, the terminology of which 
had passed into the language of the people. He never speaks 
either of tnittation (reAeTH, pinows) nor of an tmittrate (pvorns, 
teteAecpevos, TeAerOeis) nor of an inttrator (lepopavtyns) nor 
of mystical contemplation (éromteia, ta eromtexd), etc. On 
the other hand, we have shown that his mystery is the very 
opposite of the pagan mysteries, that his use of the word 
perfect (réXevos, which, moreover, does not belong to the 
vocabulary of the mysteries) is not different from its classical 
use (cf. pp. 41, 42), and finally, that his psychological voca- 
bulary (in particular mvetpa, mveparixds, Wuxy, PuxiKxds) 1s 
directly derived from the Old Testament (cf. pp. 43-55). 

How, then, do the partisans of the religions geschichtliche 
Methode prove their statements? Here is a typical example 
of their reasoning. St Paul calls Timothy a soldier of Christ, 
and calls himself a prisoner of Christ. Now Reitzenstein 
affirms that these appellations are borrowed from the language 
of the religions of the mysteries (Die hellenistischen 
Mysterienreligionen, Leipzig, 1910, pp. 66-83). Harnack 
could have taught him that ‘‘ the description of Christians as 
soldiers of Christ is in no way due to the influence of foreign 
religions ’’’ (Militia Christi, Leipzig, 1905, p. 122). But the 
testimony of this scholar was not needed to show that the 
life of man in all literatures, from Job to Stoicism, is often 
compared to a conflict. As for the title prisoner of Christ, 
the reasoning of Reitzenstein is quite astounding. In the 
Serapeion at Memphis there were persons known as kéroxou. 
Reitzenstein alleges that these kxdéroxoe were ‘‘ novices, 
serving in the temple, in the hope of an initiation, which 
often had to be waited for during many years, sometimes a 
whole lifetime ’’ (p. 80); and this, he thinks, suggested to 
St Paul the idea of calling himself a prisoner of Christ 
(Philem. 1 and 9; and Eph. iii, 1). Were the KATOX OL 
voluntary prisoners of Isis or of Serapis? Preuschen 
Ménchtum und Serapiskult?, Giessen, 1903), and Wilcken 
Papyruskunde, vol. i, Part II, pp. 130-132) think they were 
possessed. But even if xdroxos did signify prisoner, what 
would that have to do with the Seopuos of the Apostle? 

After this we cannot be astonished that the paradoxes of 
the new school have called forth many protests. Anrich, in 


390 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


his masterly study (Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem 
Einfluss auf das Christentum, Gottingen 1894), denied any 
influence of pagan mysteries on primitive Christianity. 
Cumont (Les religions orientales, Paris, 1906, pp. xi-xv), and 
Toutain (Les cultes paiens dans l’empire romain, vol. il, 
Paris, 1911, pp. 150-59) think the same. C. Clemen in his two 
works (Religionsgesch. Erklarung des N.T., Giessen, 1909, 
and Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das AGlteste 
Christentum, Giessen, 1913) reduces the influence of the 
mysteries almost to vanishing point. Such is also the 
opinion of Groton (Dict. of the Apostolic Church, Edin- 
burgh, 1918, vol. ii, p. 62), who notes only certain resem- 
blances in terminology covering totally different ideas. Such 
is almost the position of Kennedy (St Paul and the Mystery 
Religions, London, 1913),,and of M. Jones (The N.T. in the 
Twentieth Century, London, 1914, pp. 120-161). It would 
be easy to prolong the list; but we cannot omit Schweitzer 
(Geschichte der paulin. Forschung, Tiibingen, 1911, pp. 141- 
184), whose criticism, although severe, is often judicious and 
acute. Let us mention also J. Gresham Machen, The Origin 
of Paul’s Religion, N.Y., 1921 (chapters vi and vii), a solid 
work which a Catholic could unreservedly approve, if the 
author (pp. 284-88) did not attack the efficaciousness of the 
sacraments ex opere operato. 

On their side, Catholics have diligently and abundantly re- 
futed these systems: Mangenot, La doctrine de St Paul et les 
mystéres paiens (in Revue du clergé, vol. Ixxiv, pp. 1 and 
258); La langue de St Paul et celle des mystéres paiens 
(ibid. vol. Ixxv, 1913, p. 129), St Paul et les mystéres patens 
(in Revue prat. d’apol., vol. xvi, 1918, pp. 176, 241, 339); 
Jacquier, Les mystéres patens et St Paul (in Dict. apol. de la 
foi cathol., vol. iii, 1920, cols. 964-1014), where the reader 
will find an extensive bibliography ; Venard, Le christianisme 
et les religions de mystéres (in Rev. du clergé, vol. ciil, pp. 182 
and 283); see also the article by P. Lagrange, Attis et le 
Christianisme (in Rev. biblique, vol. xvi, 1919, pp. 419-80), 
and his review of the work of M. Loisy, Les mystéres paiens 
et le Mystére chrétien (ibid., vol. xvii, 1920, pp. 420-446). 


NOTE M—IN CHRIST JESUS 


I—USE OF THE PHRASE 


One of the most characteristic expressions in the theo- 
logical language of St Paul is the phrase In Christo Jesu. It 
can be said to be peculiarly his own, for he employs it 
164 times, while it is wholly absent from the Synoptists and 
other writings of the N.T. with the exception of St John, 
Paul’s discourses in Acts (iv, 2; xiii, 39), and 1 Peter 
(iii, 16, 19; v, 10, 14), whose close resemblance of language 
and ideas to Paul’s style is well known. St John uses an 
analogous phrase twenty-four times, especially in the allegory 
of the Vine (xv, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7) and in the recommendation 
made by Jesus to his disciples to abide im him (vi, 56; 
RIVZOU SERVI, Gaye cVilgel pat OLN NI P5%6)10, 24°27". 1116 24> 
v, It, 20) as he himself is im his Father. The Apocalypse 
has once ev Kvpiw (xiv, 13), like Paul, and another time 
ev “Inocov (i, 9), which Paul never uses, for Eph. iv, 21 is 
entirely different. 

The formula is as common in St Paulas it is rare elsewhere. 
It recurs in all his Epistles except in the one to Titus; and 
the exception is purely accidental, since the three Pastorals 
are evidently by the same author. However, it is not every- 
where distributed equally. As one might have anticipated, it 
is much more frequent in the Epistles of the captivity, the 
principal subject of which is the mystical union of Christians 
with Christ. The following statistical table is furnished by 
Deissmann (Die neutestam. Formel “in Christo Jesu,’ Marburg, 
1892), who has made the study of this phrase a speciality : 


év X. "I. | ev Xpiory. | év Kuply. a eerie. 




















Epistle. | Number. 












1 Thess. 2 I 4 O 
2 Thess. fe) fo) 3 9) 
5 «! I .e) 
7 6 9 I 
fe) 7p 74 4 
8 5 8 fe) 
8 2 9 I 
I 2 4 II 
7 6 ee 12 
I g2 2 oO 
2 O fe) fe) 
7 O ) Oo 
O oO oO fe) 


391 


392 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Besides there are Phil. iv, 13 (€v rq evdvvapotvri pe), Eph. i, 6 
(ev tT Hyarnpévp), and Eph. iv, 21 (kaOds eorw dAybea ev TO 
"Incot), 


II—MEANING OF THE PHRASE 


1. In St John.-~The phrase which expresses the circumin- 
cession of the divine Persons: ‘I am in my Father and my 
Father in me” (John x, 38; xiv, 10, 11), is extended by the 
author of the fourth Gospel to the relations of Christ and his 
disciples: “In that day you shall know that I am in my 
Father, and you in me and I in you” (John xiv, 20). Else- 
where he affirms that by the possession of the Spirit of God 
(1 John iii, 24; iv, 13), or, what amounts to the same thing, 
of love, we are in God and God in us (1 John iv, 15-16): 
O Ocds aydry eoriv, kal 6 pevev ev TH dyamry ev TH Ded péver kal 6 
Ocds ev avr@ pévee. Through love indeed we partake of the 
nature of God (2 Pet. i, 4) and of his activity, since our super- 
natural act is at the same time one of God and of ourselves ; 
there takes place, therefore, in us something analogous to the 
relations of the divine Persons between themselves. St John 
immediately explains his thought by the allegory of the Vine 
(John xv, 1-10). The vine and the branches live the same 
life, are nourished by the same sap, and work together in the 
production of the same fruit. They form one being, they 
have one and the same action. There is here plainly a union 
similar to that of the mystical body of St Paul, and the 
language used in both cases is almost identical: The body 
corresponds to the vine-stock and the members correspond to 
the branches. Compare, for example, John xv, 5 with 
1 Cor. xii, 12, 27. The only difference is that St John, 
representing Jesus Christ as the speaker, says ev éot (xv, 4: 
peivate ev éuol, kaya év bpiv); while Paul, speaking of Christ, 
says év Xpirr. For St John, to abide in the Son is to abide 
in the Father and reciprocally (1 John ii, 24); for St Paul, to 
be in Christ and to be in the Holy Spirit are also equivalent 
expressions. 


2. In St Paul.—The monograph of Deissmann comes to 
this conclusion (of. cit., p. 97): “ The phrase év Xpirr@ Inood, 
created by St Paul under the influence of earlier profane use, 
characterizes the relation of the Christian to Jesus Christ as a 
kind of local presence in the spiritual (mystical) Christ. This 
idea, which has its counterpart in no other relation of man to 
man, we can conceive by the analogy of the expressions év 
IIvevpars and év r¢ Oem, which represent a mode of existence in 
a spiritual element comparable to the air. Is it necessary to 
conceive of this local presence in its literal meaning and not 
as a simple rhetorical figure? It is impossible to say with 
certainty, but the local sense is very probable.”’ 


DETACHED NOTES 893 


Karl (Beitrage zum Verstandnis ... des Ap. Paulus, 1896) 
accepts in general the conclusions of Deissmann, but he is 
wrong to compare the formula in question with the expres- 
sion ev Pecd(eBovdA (Matt. xii, 27-28), where ev iS a pure 
Hebraism. Johannes Weiss, Paulin. Probleme (in Stud. u. Krit., 
1896, first number), also adopts the meaning of Deissmann, 
but he believes that the expression was in frequent use at the 
time of Paul; that the influence of the Septuagint, in the case 
where év is found connected with God (2 Sam. xx, I; xxii, 30; 
Ps. xvii, 30; Zach. xii. 5), may have acted here; and finally 
that ev, including the idea of limit, often indicates the sphere 
in which the action takes place. Sanday (The Epistle to the 
Romans®, Edinburgh, 1907, p. 161), although he also praises 
the pamphlet of the learned professor, finds that his method 
is rather too systematic and his conception somewhat too 
realistic. That: is indeed the impression made by Deiss- 
mann, who writes as a grammarian rather than an exegete. 
Without violence the expression cannot be reduced to a 
perfectly identical concept. It is necessary to take into 
account the force of habit which blunts the meaning of 
ordinary expressions, of the reaction produced by analogous 
ideas, and of the influence exercised by certain associations of 
words and other phenomena of the same nature. 

Here is the result of an attentive examination of the 
different elements of the problem : (a) In virtue of the theory 
of the mystical body, we form an integral part of Christ, we 
put on Christ, we are buried in Christ, Christ is in us and we 
in him. Such is the ordinary, and so to speak the technical, 
meaning of the phrase In Christo Jesu in St Paul, especially 
when it is a question of the supernatural life of the Christian 
or of the union of Christians with one another. In such a 
case the expression In Christo Jesu can be replaced by the 
words In Spiritu, without the necessity on that account of 
admitting the identity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, an 
identity which a mistaken exegesis wishes to draw from 
2 Cor. iii, 17.—(b) But quite frequently the meaning becomes 
less clear, and the phrase In Christo signifies scarcely more 
than in a Christian manner, from the Christian point of view, 
or conformably to the principles of Christianity, and could be 
replaced by In evangelio, which is sometimes substituted for 
it: Gal. i, 22 (ékxAnolac ev X.) ; 2 Cor. xii, 2 (Otda av Opwrirov 
év X.); 1 Cor. iii, 1 (vireo ev X.). Cf. Rom. xvi, 17 ; 1 Cor. xv, 
Eon 2iCor il, 12) Colsiii. 18-20."--The antithesis to év Xpuot 
would then be év 76 “lovéaicpge (compare Gal. i, 13, 14 with 
1 Cor. iv, £7) or else év 7@ vdum (compare Rom. iil, 1g with 
1 Thess. ii, 14), etc.—(c) We must also take into account the 
influence of the Septuagint, much greater than Deissmann 
admits, especially if we consider the deuterocanonical books. 
The Hebrew particle 3, translated by év in the Septuagint, 


304 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


designates the instrument, support, society, limit. The Apostle 
construes with ev the verbs to boast (2 Thess. i, 4; 1 Cor. i, 31; 
iii, 21; 2 Cor. v, 12; x, 15, etc.); to have confidence (1 Thess. 
li, 2; Phil. iii. 3-4) ; to rejoice (Col. i, 24; Phil. i, 18). The 
Septuagint often does the same with the verb to hope; we 
may therefore suppose that in these cases the formula Jn 
Christo Jesu follows the analogy of the other complements, 
and has not its own special value. 


IiI—In Christ anv In the Spirit 


Gunkel (Die Wirkungen des h. Geistes, Gottingen, 1888) has 
emphasized the close and constant relations which exist 
between the form év Xpur@*and év tveduare. He concludes 
(p. 97): “All the operations of the rvedua appear in other 
places as operations of Christ.” Indeed, the virtues and 
supernatural gifts are accompanied by either form in- 
differently : iors (1 Cor. xii, 9; Gal. iii, 26), @ydéan (Col. i, 8; 
Rom. viil, 39), e(pjvy (Rom. xiv, 17; Phil. iv, 7); also the 
verbs expressing action or state: eévas (Rom. viii, 9; 1 Cor. 
1, 30), orHKewv (Phil. i, 27; 1 Thess. iii, 8), eppayiter Oa (Eph. 
iv, 30; i, 13), AaAeiv (x Cor. xii, 3; 2 Cor. ii, 17), nylcaopLevos 
(Rom. xv, 16; 1 Cor. i, 2), tAnpotcGas (Eph. v, 18; Col, ii, 10). 
In this list the first citation refers to the form év wvevpari, the 
second to the form év Xpuore or a similar one. 

The best way to study this phenomenon of identity is to 
run. through a concordance, noting the form év Xpiotw, and 
trying to replace it by év rvedpars, then to make the counter- 
proof by replacing ev mvevpare by év Xpsor¢. It will be 
observed (A) that the form can be very often changed 
without appreciably altering the sense; and that in every 
case where ev IIvetpars denotes with certainty the Holy Spirit 
it can be replaced by év Xpiorg, unless it is specially a 
question of charismata (as in 1 Cor. xii, 3; xiv, 16).— 
(B) That the exchange is, nevertheless, impossible in three 
cases : (a2) when the reference is to God loving us, choosing 
us, or predestinating us ‘‘in Christ” (Rom viii, 39; 2 Cor. v, 19; 
Eph. 1, 3, etc.); (6) when it is a question of Christ as the 
second Adam—that is to say, in his redemptive mediation 
(Rom. iii, 24; 1 Cor. xv, 22; Eph. ii, 13; iv, 32; 2 Tim. ii, 10, 
etc.); (c) when the expression év Xpur¢ is equivalent to 
“from the Christian point of view,” or “as a Christian,” etc. 
(Rom. xvi, 3, 9, 10; 1 Cor. iii, 1 ; iV, 55, 17 72) Coreen 
Gal. i, 22 ; Phil. i, 13, etc.).—(C) That even where the substi- 
tution is absolutely possible, it almost always causes the loss 
of a very delicate shade of meaning, like that which would be 
produced by putting soul instead of head, or vice versa, in the 
description of the mystical body. 


DETACHED NOTES 395 


Deissmann (of. cit., p. 84) asserts that the formula év rvev- 
pare is taken by St Paul fifteen times out of nineteen in the 
specific sense of év Xpwry. But if we examine each case 
strictly we shall make a very different reckoning. (a) Thus 
1 Cor. xii, 9 (érépw riots év TO adTo rvevpart) and Gal. iii, 26 
(viol Qeot éore Sid riotews év Xpioty ’Incov) have only an 
apparent resemblance ; for, besides the fact that the first 
example concerns charismatical faith, and the second 
justifying faith, it is very probable that ev X. “I. ought to 
be connected with viol Qcod éore, and not with da mricrews 
(see p. 261).—(b) Rom. viii, 9 (ovx gore év capkt adda ev 
rvevpare) and 1 Cor. i, 30 (e& airov tpets eore ev X. 1.) are not 
to be made equivalent without some reservations, for it is 
not sure that év mvevpare designates the Holy Spirit, and 
év Xpwrd depends not on ¢ore but on é€ avTov eare.— 
(c) Phil. i, 27 (oryjxere ev evi rvevpatt, pug YuxXy) cannot be 
paralleled with Phil. iv, I (orjkete év Kupip), because TVEVPLG 
is not the Holy Spirit, as the synonymy of yvx7 proves.— 
(d) 1 Cor. xii, 9 (xapiopara tapdrwv év To avT@ mvevpatt) and 
Rom. vi, 23 (To xéperpa Tov Gcod (wi) aidveos év X. ’L) have 
nothing in common, because xépurpa there designates very 
different things, and especially because év X. I. is applied to 
(wi) aidvios.—(e) Col. i, 8 (7Hv ipaov dydanv év mvevparr) must 
not be compared with Rom. viii, 39 (47 tis ayamns Tov Oeov 
ris év X.’1.), for in the latter case it is a question of the love 
of God for us, and Jesus Christ fulfils his usual office of 
mediator.—(f) In Rom. il, 29 (repitopiy Kapdias ev Tvevpatt ov 
ypdppate) is it a question of the Holy Spirit, in order that we 
may be authorized to compare Col. ii, 11 (ev  [Xpwr79] kat 
mepueTunOere) ?—(g) Gal.:v, 16 (rvevpart mepumareire) does not 
offer the typical form, and one cannot compare Col. ii, 6 
(év airg [Xpiorw | mepurareire).—(h) 1 Cor. Xil, 3 (év mvevpate 
Qccd AaAov) and 2 Cor. il, 17 (év Xpiorp Jadovpev) have only a 
deceptive similitude: the proof is that the two expressions 
could not be exchanged one for the other. 

On the whole, the equivalency of the formulas év Xpurre 
and év Ulvedpars is a very limited one, and even where it 
does exist there is a fine shade of meaning which is not 
negligible. 


NOTE N—THE GOSPEL 


I—THE ‘‘GospEL” APART FROM ST PauL 


1. Use of the Word.—The word “ gospel” occurs sixty times 
in St Paul as against sixteen times elsewhere; and the verb “to 
evangelize ’’ twenty times as against thirty-three times else- 
where.—It is found that both these words are wanting in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, that St John uses them only in the 
Apocalypse (once the substantive, and twice the verb in 
the active voice), and that St Luke frequently makes use of 
the verb, but seems purposely to avoid the substantive, for 
he puts it only into the mouths of St Paul and St Peter 
(Acts xv, 7; xx. 24).—The absence of the word ‘“ gospel ” 
in St Luke, St John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews is all 
the more extraordinary since this term formed part of the 
Christian vocabulary at a very early date. Can it be because 
the specific meaning of “ good news” was not yet sufficiently 
known to the non-Christian public ? 


2. Meaning of the Word in the Synoptisis.—Evayyédvov (in the 
singular in Homer, in the plural in the Attic dialect) signified 
the present given to the bearer of good lidings, or the sacrifice 
offered on the occasion of good news. Later it was also used of 
the good news itself ; but this meaning, which has not been 
found previous to the age of Augustus, is foreign to the 
language of the Septuagint, for in 2 Sam. iv, 10 and XVill, 22 
the meaning is a “present for good tidings”; and in 
2 Sam. xviil, 25 it is almost certainly necessary to read 
evayyeAva in the feminine (as in 2 Sam. XVill, 20, 27) instead 
of evayyedua (Swete). 

The comparison of the Synoptists is curious and instructive : 


Matthew. 


7d evay. THs Bacthelas, iv, 23 
Td evay. THS Baoidelas, ix, 35 
(xvi, 25) 





(a) ré evayyédov ‘I. X., i, 1 

(b) 76 evayyédov rod Geos, i, 14 
(c) 7d evayyértor, i, 15 

(d) 





(iv, 13) 





(ce) Evexev é€uod Kal rod evay., (ix, 24) 
Vili, 35 

(f) évexev éuot cal rod evay., x, 29 

(g) 7d evayyéXov, xiii, Io 

(h) 7 evayyédor, xiv, 9 

(7) 76 evayyé\uov, xvi, 5 












(xix, 29) (xviii, 29) 
76 evay. THs Baordelas, xxiv, 14 


7d evayyéNov TolTO, XXvi, 13 











396 


DETACHED NOTES 397 


St Mark, six times out of eight (c¢, ¢, J, &: h, i), has the 
“ Gospel” only, as if it were a question of a well-known idea. 
Once only (a) it is ‘the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and once 
'(b) “the Gospel of God.” St Matthew has three times out of 
four—(d) forming a doublet and (g) the stereotyped form— 
“the Gospel of the kingdom.’’ St Luke avoids the word in 
the three cases (d, e, f), where his text runs parallel to that of 
the other Synoptists. 

The first time that St Mark speaks of the Gospel (after his 
preface) he defines its contents, 1, 14, 15: Postquam traditus 
est Joannes, venit Jesus in Galtlaeum, praedicans Evangelium 
regni Dei et dicens : Quoniam impletum est tempus, et appropin- 
quavit regnum Dei: poenitemint et credite Evangelio. Harnack 
limits the content of the Gospel too much when he makes it 
consist merely of the approach of the kingdom (Entstehung 
und Entwicklung der Kirchenverfassung, etc., Leipzig, Ig10, 
p. 202). No, the Gospel is not merely the approach of the 
kingdom, it is rather the kingdom that is approaching. In 
fact, (a).in Mark viii, 35 and x, 29, Jesus says: ‘Whosoever 
shall sacrifice everything for my sake and for the Gospel shall 
receive an hundredfold.” Is it possible to explain those 
words as meaning for the approach of the kingdom of God ?— 
(b) St Matthew in the parallel passages (xvi, 25; xix, 29) 
omits the word “Gospel,” no doubt because he considers it 
implicitly contained in Christ, whose message the Gospel is.— 
(c) St Luke does the same once (ix, 24), while the other time 
(xviii, 29) he replaces gvexev TOO ebayyeAtou by €vexev THs 
Bacrrelas tod Ocov, considering the contents of the Gospel 
as equal in extent to the kingdom itself.—(d) Whatever may. 
be the precise meaning of the title of St Mark (Apx7) tov 
edayyediov "I, X.), it does not favour Harnack’s contention. 


II—TuE ‘“‘GospEL” IN ST PAUL 


1. ‘Preaching the Gospel” and the “ Gospel,” —It is well to 
begin with the verb ciayyediter Gat, less technical than the noun 
ebayyéduov. This verb is once used by St Paul in the secular 
sense (1 Thess. ili, 6), but everywhere else it is in the religious 
sense popularized by the Septuagint (issxts On lie yjalry.O33 
Ixi, 1, etc.). It is often employed in an absolute way and 
signifies by itself “to preach the Gospel” (nine times out of 
nineteen) like our “to evangelize”; then it can be accom- 
panied by an object in the dative (Rom. i, 15 ; 1 Cor. Xv, 2; 
Gal. i, 8, 11; iv, 13) or in the accusative with els (2 Cor. x, 16). 
_-When the object of the predicate is expressed, it is the 
Gospel itself (1 Cor. xv, 1; 2 Cor. xi, 7) or a synonym of the 
Gospel (Gal. i, 8, 9) : messianic blessings (Rom. x, 15, quoting 
Is. lii, 7), faith (Gal. i, 23), peace (Eph. ii, 17, alluding to 
Is. lvii, 19), the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph. iii, 8), 


398 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


and finally Christ himself (Gal. i, 16). This last expression 
“to preach Christ” is to be remembered. 

St Paul also frequently employs the word “Gospel” in an 
absolute way (twenty-eight times out of sixty). It is then, in 
its full extent, the good news which Jesus Christ came to 
announce to the world. It is hardly necessary to point out 
that the Gospel never signifies the totality of the Saviour’s 
actions and discourses, and still less the book in which those 
deeds and discourses are related ; nor does St Paul contrast 
the Gospel with the Law; he knows only the antithesis of 
faith and law; it was perhaps Marcion who created the anti- 
thesis of Gospel and Law (cf. Tertullian, Adv. Marcion. i, 19, 
21; iv, 1,4; St. Irenzeus, Haereses, iv, 3). On the contrary, 
the Gospel is often put into correlation with the promise : the 
Gospel is the promise realized ; the promise is the Gospel in 
prospect (cf. Rom. i, 1,2; Eph. iii, 6; Acts xiii, 32). 

The Gospel having already taken on a technical sense whic 
allows it to be employed absolutely, the etymological notion 
of “ good news” is no longer always discernible ; the more so 
as in the Septuagint the words evayyeAtfer Oar and eayyéduov 
need to be investigated in order to know if they express good 
news (2 Sam. xvili, 27; 1 Kings i, 42; Is. lii, 7: edvayyeArCopevos 
ayaa), and Josephus (Bell., II, xvii, 4) was able to say devdv 
evayyédvov. From this it appears also that the Gospel has 
a tendency to mean no longer merely a collection of truths 
but of salutary institutions : Virtus enim Det est in salutem omni 
credenti (Rom. i, 16). The same significant evolution begins 
to appear in the case of a synonym of the Gospel, the Mystery 
(1 Cor. iv, 1: dispensatores mysteriorum Det). 

When the Gospel is not employed in an absolute sense it 
is determined either by an adjective (2 Cor. xi, 4; Gal. i, 6: 
evayyedov érepov), or by a subclause (Gal. i, 11; ii, 2; 1 Cor. 
xv, 1: the Gospel which I preach), or by a genitive of the 
thing (2 Cor. iv, 4: the Gospel of the glory of Christ; 
Gal. ti, 7: the Gospel of the circumcision and of the uncir- 
cumcision; Eph. i, 13: the Gospel of your salvation ; vi, 15 : 
the Gospel of peace ; 1 Tim. i, 11: the Gospel of the glory of 
the blessed God), or more frequently by a genitive of the 
person (God six times, Christ ten times, Paul six times). In 
the case of the Gospel of God the meaning is not doubtful; it 
is the Gospel of which God is the author (Rom. i, 1; xv, 16; 
2 Cor. xi, 7; 1 Thess. ii, 2, 8,9). As to the Gospel of Paul 
and the Gospel of Chrsst, the meaning is less certain. 


2. The Gospel of Paul_—When St Paul speaks of his Gospel, 
whether he means ‘‘the Gospel preached by him” or his 
“preaching of the Gospel,” the difference is very little as 
regards the sense, and the question has hardly any interest 
except from the point of view of philology. Now it must be 


DETACHED NOTES 399 


confessed that the active signification (preaching) is not sug- 
gested by the form of the Greek word ; that, if it exists, it is 
at least exceptional and that it is not absolutely required in 
any example we possess. Indeed in the phrase: “ They who 
preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel” (1 Cor. ix, 14), 
the Gospel is not the preaching but the Gospel preached; 
otherwise it would be necessary to take the word ‘“‘ Gospel” in 
two different senses in the same phrase. Living by the Gospel 
(by evangelical institutions), is used as we speak of living by 
the altar. In the same way “the Gospel of the circumcised 
and the uncircumcised” (Gal. ii, 7) may very well be the 
Gospel intended for the Jews or for the Gentiles, and not 
preaching to the one or the other. If the latter meaning finds 
support in the context (ii, 8), the former is favoured by the 
text itself (weriorevpar 7d evayyéeAcov THs wepitouyns ; cf. 1 Tim. 
i, 11; 1 Thess. 11, 4). It is, therefore, better to understand by 
these expressions ‘‘my Gospel, our Gospel” (Rom. ii, 16; 
Xvi, 25; 2 Cor.iv, 3; 2 Thess. 1i, 14; 2 Tim. ii, 8), the Gospel 
committed to Paul, rather than the proclamation of the 
Gospel. This meaning is confirmed by the identification of 
the Gospel with the mystery (Eph. vi, 19: 7d puvoripiov Tov 
evayyeAiov) and by texts like Rom. xvi, 25: xata 7d evayyédudv 
pov Kat 7d Kypvypa 71, Xpirrot, where xijpvypa is not the 
preaching of Christ but the message regarding Christ (passive 
sense) ; and that other text (1 Cor. xv, I: 7d ev. 6 etnyyeAuod- 
pyv vpiv), Cf. Gal. i, 11: 7d ev, 7d edayyediobev tm’ epod ; 
Gal. li, 2: Td ev, 6 Knpicow.—However, the active sense seems 
preferable in 1 Thess. i, 5: Evangelium nostrum non fuit ad 
vos 1n sermone tantum, sed et 1n virtute, et in Spiritu sancto, et in 
plenstudine multa, sicut scitis quales fuerimus in vobis propter vos. 
It would be appropriate also in Rom. i, 1-9; 2 Cor. ii, 12; 
Mill eT Ole X,014, tC, 


III—TuHeE GOSPEL OF CHRIST 


Zahn (Einleitung in das N.T.*, Leipzig, 1907, vol. ii, 
pp. 169-171), Harnack (Enistehung der Kirchenverfassung, etc., 
216-217), and Seeberg (Das Evangelium Christi, Leipzig, 1905, 
Ppp. 45-47) wish to see in this genitive a genitive of the author 
(the Gospel brought or promulgated by Christ). They ad- 
vance five arguments in favour of this opinion: (a) The 
analogy of the expression ‘Gospel of God.”—(b) The analogy 
of the expression ‘‘my Gospel,” where we have equally a sub- 
jective genitive.-—(c) The expression “the Gospel of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus” (2 Thess. i, 8), where there cannot be 
a question of a Gospel having Jesus as object, but certainly 
of a Gospel preached by Jesus.—(d) The analogy of the 
phrase “the testimony of Christ” (1 Cor. i, 6)—that is to say, 
the testimony furnished by Christ—/(e) The fact that, when 


400 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


he wishes to speak of the Gospel concerning Christ, Paul says 
explicitly: ‘the Gospel of God .. . concerning his Son” 
(Rom. 1, 3). 

However, the great majority of exegetes are in favour of 
the other meaning: the Gospel relating to Christ, having 
Christ as object.—(a) In fact, the Apostle always establishes 
a close relation between the Gospel of Christ and preaching 
on the subject of Christ. When he says that he has pro- 
claimed the Gospel of Christ as far as Illyria, he adds by way 
of commentary: ‘I have desired to preach the Gospel where 
the name of Christ has never been uttered” (Rom. xv, 20).— 
(b) Instead of the Gospel of Christ, he uses also “the Gospel 
of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. iv, 4)—that is to say, of Christ 
glorified ; and it is clear that here the meaning is not subjec- 
tive but objective, as in “the Gospel of our salvation (Eph. 
i, 13), the Gospel of peace” (Eph. vi, 15).—(c) The analogies 
invoked are precarious and several can be turned the other 
way : thus the testimony of Christ is not the testimony rendered 
by Christ, but that which is rendered to Christ. See Heinrici 
or Cornely on 1 Cor. 1, 6. 

It results from all this that there is no serious reason for 
abandoning the traditional exegesis on this point and that the 
Gospel of Christ in St Paul is not the Gospel brought to man- 
kind by Christ, but the Gospel of which Christ is the object 
and principal theme. 


NOTE O—PSYCHOLOGICAL LANGUAGE OF ST PAUL 


Seven terms are characteristic and frequently used: the 
heart (xapdia), the reason or rather the mind (vois), the con- 
science (avveidnois), the body (capa), the flesh (odp§), the soul 
(Yvx7), and the spirit (rvevua). We shall not revert to the first 
three terms, which are moreover sufficiently clear. The four 
others are divided into two groups—the body and the flesh, 
and the soul and the spirit—which constitute the outward and 
the inward man. 


I—NOTION OF THE Worp “ Bopy” 


1. Use of the Word.—In Homer, cous always means a corpse ; 
the living body is called deuas. But the usage of it changed 
subsequently and copa designated the organism, living or dead, 
of men and animals. For St Paul the two essential conditions 
are the diversity of the organs and the unity of the vital 
principle. In eighty-nine cases the word “body” is used by 
St Paul as follows: sixty-six times in the sense of a human 
body, living or dead ; five times, by extension, it means the body 
of plants and stars, the latter in speaking of the resurrected 
human body (1 Cor. xv, 37-40) ; fifteen times it designates 
figuratively the mystical body of Christ; once it means reality 
as contrasted with the shadow (Col. ii, 11). Three cases 
remain to be considered. 


2. Remarkable Cases.—(a) Rom. vi, 6: ‘ Our old man was 
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed.” 
The body of sin (rd coma THs dpaptias) can hardly be anything 
but the body in so far as it is under the influence of sin. The 
body is not itself destroyed by baptism ; it is so, however, as 
belonging to sin ; it is so in such a way “ that we are no longer 
in the service of sin.” Compare the expressions “ sinful 
flesh” (Rom. viii, 3), ‘the body of death” (Rom. vii, 24), “the 
body of the flesh” (Cok ii, 11). The old explanation which 
sees in ‘the body of sin” the whole sum-total of sin seems to 
be rejected both by etymology and context.—(b) Col. ii, 11: 
“You are circumcised with a spiritual circumcision [which 
consists] in the despoiling of the body of the flesh.” It is 
necessary to interpret the body of the flesh like the body of sin ; 
it is the carnal body, given over to the instincts of the flesh. 
One can despoil this body by eliminating the relation which 
attaches it to the flesh. The same expression, Col. 1, 22 
(where it is a question of the body of Jesus), has an-entirely 
different meaning ; it signifies ‘‘the body of the flesh” in its 
literal meaning.—(c) Eph. ii, 16: Christ proposes to reconcile 

I. 401 26 


402 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Jews and Gentiles ‘in one body.” The expression év évi cépare 
is equivalent in its idea to els é€va kawvdv dvOpwrov of the pre- 
ceding verse. It designates, therefore, the mystical body of 
Christ and not his real crucified body, as St Chrysostom and 
his school, as well as several modern exegetes have thought, 
basing their opinion on the parallel passage (Col. i, 22: év r@ 
Twat. THS TapKds avTov), 


II—NOoTION OF THE WorpD “ FLESH ” 


1. The Word “ Flesh” in its Bad Sense-—Certain phrases of the 
Old Testament tended to give to the word “ flesh” a deroga- 
tory meaning: “All flesh had corrupted its way” (Gen. vi, 12). 
—‘ My spirit shall not remain in man for ever because he 
is flesh” (Gen. vi, 3). The philosophical language of the 
Stoics had a similar tendency. After Epicurus had made the 
flesh the seat of pleasure and pain and the source of bliss, the 
Stoics did their best to depreciate the flesh. The proof of this 
is found in Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and especially 
in Epictetus, who takes pleasure in designating the flesh by 
a contemptuous diminutive (capxidiov), See Heinrici, Meyer’s 
Kommentar*, on 1 Cor. ii, 16, pp. 112-114. It is very possible 
that this reaction of Stoicism against the doctrine of Epicurus 
may have influenced the languageof St Paul. On the contrary, 
the dualism of Plato, even when softened by Philo, has 
nothing in common with the Pauline conception of the flesh. 
According to St Paul, the flesh is imperfect if compared to the 
spirit ; it is weak and impotent in contrast to supernatural 
blessings ; it is bad as soon as it opposes the action of the 
Holy Spirit. The bad sense of the word flesh originates 
always from one of these antitheses expressed or implied. An 
examination of the texts will show this, 


2. The “Flesh” in the Language of Paul.—The word flesh 
(employed ninety-one times by St Paul) has three principal 
meanings. 

(A) Flesh is animated matter.—More exactly it would be the 
fibrous and muscular part of the body in contrast to the bones 
(Luke xxiv, 39) and the blood; but St Paul takes the part for 
the whole, and, practically, the flesh is for him the body minus 
the idea of an organism. This shade of meaning does not 
hinder the general synonymy of the terms, which can be often 
exchanged without any appreciable difference of meaning: 
‘‘absent in body (Col. ii, 5), to live, abide, walk in the flesh 
(Gal. ii, 20; Phil. i, 24; 2 Cor. x, 3), our mortal flesh 
(2 Cor. iv, 11), the likeness of the flesh (Rom. viii, 3), infirmity 
of the flesh (Gal. iv, 13, 14), the sting of the flesh (2 Cor. xii, 7), 
tribulation in the flesh, (1 Cor. vii, 28; cf Coll aj =aqe 
2 Cor. vil, 5), my face in the flesh (Col. ii, 1), the flesh of 


DETACHED NOTES 403 


Christ (Eph. ii, 14; Col. i, 22; of 1 Tim. iii, 16).” Sometimes 
biblical usage requires flesh instead of body: when it is a 
quesHon of circumcision (Rom. ii, 28: circumcision in the 

esh; Gal. vi, 12-13 ; Eph. ii, rr ; Col. ii, 13), and when the 
reference is to marriage (1 Cor. vi, 16; Eph. v, 31: erunt duo 
in carne una [or better in carnem unam, eis cdpxa piav] after 
Gen. ii, 24).—The converse of the flesh is not the sensitive 
soul (Yvx7)—for this forms part of the notion of flesh—but the 
intellectual soul (rvetpa), 1 Cor. v, 5 : tradere hujusmodi satanae 
in interitum carnis, ut spiritus salvus sit in die Domini. The 
word flesh may assume a bad significance from the fact of this 
physical opposition. 

(B) The flesh is human nature, with an accessory idea of weak- 
ness ; by extension, it means descent or natural kinship.—Con- 
formably to biblical usage, ‘all flesh” signifies “ every man” 
(Rom. iti, 20; 1. Cor. i, 29 ; Gal. ii, 16). The additional idea 
of weakness is specially rendered by the expression “ flesh and 
blood” (1 Cor. xv, 50; Gal. i, 16; Eph. vi, 12). It can also 
come from a tacit opposition to something superior to nature: 
to glory according to the flesh (2 Cor. xi, 18), not to have 
confidence in the flesh (Phil. iii, 3-4), to know no man 
according to the flesh (2 Cor. v, 16), wise according to the 
flesh (1 Cor. i, 26), lords according to the flesh (Eph. vi, 5; 
Col. iii, 22), dear in the flesh (Philem. 16).—The same 
opposition, expressed or understood, can affect the word flesh 
in the sense of descent “or natural relationship.” Jesus 
Christ is descended from David according to the flesh 
(Rom. i, 3; cf. ix, 5); Abraham is the ancestor of the Jews 
according to the flesh (Rom. iv, 1); Paul is their brother 
according to the flesh (Rom. ix, 3), and he calls them his 
flesh (Rom. xi, 14). But “Israel according to the flesh” 
(1 Cor. x, 18) makes a pendant to Israel according to the 
spirit, to the “Israel of God” (Gal. vi, 16); the “children 
of the flesh” are placed in opposition to the children 
of God (Rom. ix, 8); Isaac and Ishmael are children of 
Abraham, one according to the flesh, the other according to 
the spirit, because the latter is the son of the miracle and 
the son of the promise (Gal. iv, 23-29). 

(C) Finally, the flesh is human nature, as it is in the present 
order, vitiated by sin and infected with concupiscence.—The 
bad sense, instead of being simply physical, as in the pre- 
ceding paragraph, here becomes moral. The flesh is no 
longer merely the weak, failing, material, terrestrial, human 
part ; it has a relation—either of origin, or tendency, or 
affinity—with sin. This meaning, frequent in chapters vii 
and vii of the Epistle to the Romans and chapter v of the 
Epistle to the Galatians, is also met elsewhere (2 Cor. x, 2 ; 
Eph. ii, 3; Col. ii, 18, etc.). Then the flesh is often per- 
sonihed ; it has desires, projects, and a will; it is the 


404 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


antagonist of the Holy Spirit or of the new spirit which 
grace creates in us. However, the moral bad sense of the 
word is sometimes so attenuated that it is almost indistin- 
guishable from the physical sense. 


III—NOTION OF THE WorpD “Sou.” 


The soul (anima or animus, cf. dvepos, “wind”; Yvx7 from 
Pixu, “to breathe” ; Hebrew néfésh, ‘‘ breath,” cf the Assyrian 
napashu, ‘‘to blow’’) is properly the vital breath, the sign of 
life, and, by extension, life itself.—St Paul employs this word 
only thirteen times, including two quotations (Rom. xi, 3, 
quoting 1 Kings xix, 10, and 1 Cor. xv, 45, from Gen. ii. 7), 
and gives it four meanings : 

(A) Individual life (distinct from (w7)=life in general).— 
Rom. xi, 3 (they seek my soul=my life); Rom. xvi, 4 (they 
have risked their heads for my soul= my life) ; 1 Thess. ii, 8 
(we would gladly impart unto you not only the Gospel, but 
also our own souls); Phil. 1, 30 (having hazarded his soul = 
risking his life). 

(B) The subject of life, the person.—Rom. ii, 9 ; xiii. I (every 
soul=every person); 1 Cor. xv, 45 (Adam was made into 
a living soul=an animated being, endowed with life). 

(C) The soul itself as distinct from the body.—2 Cor. i, 23 
(I call God to witness upon my soul) ; xii, 15 (I most gladly 
will spend myself for your souls). Here belongs the expres- 
sion «x Yvy7s (Eph. vi, 6; Col. iii, 23), “ from the soul,” an 
expression equivalent to €« kapdias, éx rvetparos. And indeed 
in Phil. i, 27 (orjKere ev evi rvevpate pia Yuyn cvvabXovvTes 
ty wiore.) the expression pug vx is almost equivalent to 
Eve TvEvPATL, 

(D) The soul as the principle of the sentient life-—1 Thess. v, 23 
(ro mvevpa Kai » Pvyn Kal 7d copa). In this sensé the soul 
is distinguished from the sfzrzt, as the vital principle is distin- 
guished from the reason, although both proceed from one 
substance. 

The adjective yvxixds possesses an ethical meaning which 
it is very important to observe. It is in implicit opposition 
to mvevpatixkds. Now the latter indicates a relation to the 
Spirit of God, source of the supernatural; and this is what 
Yuxexds excludes, or rather does not include. The man who 
is Puxexds is one who has only the natural life, without being 
quickened by the Holy Spirit. He is very well defined by 
St Jude 19: Yuyxixot rvetua pn Exovtes. But the man deprived 
of the Spirit of God is in reality carnal, and therefore Puyexds 
and gapxixds come to be almost synonymous (1 Cor. ii, 14: 
Animalis [Yvxixds] homo non percipit ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei ; 
James iil, 15: Saptentia . . . terrena, anmimalis [yvyxixn], 





DETACHED NOTES 405 


diabolica). Nevertheless, this bad sense is less pronounced 


in 1 Cor. xv, 44, 46, where Puyexds and mvevpatiKos mark above 
all a gradation. 


IV—NoTION OF THE Worp “SprRIT” 


1. Perhaps no word causes so much perplexity to exegetes 
of the New Testament as this. Out of 145 cases where it is 
employed by St Paul, the precise sense of half of them remains 
more or less doubtful and disputable. Let us hasten to add, 
however, that these shades of meaning but rarely affect 
the general meaning of the phrase ; nevertheless, they have 
a great interest for the commentator anxious to grasp as 
nearly as possible the thought of his text,—In the proper 
sense of the word rvetya signifies “the wind, the air in 
motion,” and by derivation “breath, the air expelled from 
the lungs.” But we can pass over these two meanings, the 
first of which is not met with in St Paul, while the second 
appears in his writings only once (2 Thess. ii, 8: ille iniquus, 
quem Dominus Jesus interficiet spiritu ors sut), and that taken 
tacitly from Isaias (xi, 4).—Another very common meaning in 
the Bible and profane writers, that of an “intelligent and 
immaterial substance, angel or demon,” is also probably 
wanting in St Paul, for the two alleged examples (Eph. ii, 2 
and 1 Tim. iv, 1), understood by many interpreters to be 
personal beings, may very well bear an impersonal sense. 


2. The different meanings of the word “spirit” can be 
reduced to three : the thinking principle in man, the activity 
of the Holy Spirit, the Person of the Holy Spirit. 

(A) The spirit as the thinking principle in man,—The 
classical example of this meaning is 1 Cor. li, 11, where the 
spirit denotes the psychological consciousness of man: Outs 
enim hominum scit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis qui 
in ipso est? Similarly 1 Cor. vii, 34; 1 Thess. Vee? Ore): 
2, COL, 13-3) Vil, /ot3.—A kindred meaning is that of 
“thought” in the antithesis: absent in body, present in 
spirit (I Cor. v, 3, etc.).—Finally, the spirit often denotes 
“ the manner of thinking or conceiving, sentiment, mentality.” 
Frequent in the Old Testament (Num. v, I4, 30: spirit of 
jealousy ; Is. lxi, 3: spirit of dejection ; Hosea iv, 12: spirit 
of fornication), it is also not rare in St Paul: spirit of stupe- 
faction (Rom. xi, 8, from Is. xxix, 10), spirit of the world 
(1 Cor. ii, 12), spirit of fear (2 Tim. i, 7). This is not the 
place to examine whether the conception of a spiritual being, 
good or bad, exercising his influence in man, is not at the 
origin of this expressién. In Eph, ii, 2 (spiritus gui nunc 
operatur in filios diffidentiae) we hesitate between the two 
meanings of an impersonal influence and of a personal being. 


406 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


(B) The activity of the Holy Spirit in man, or man under 
the influence of the Holy Spirit. When St Paul says to the 
Corinthians: Quoniam aemulatores estis spirituum (1 Cor. 
xiv, 12: éwel (yAwrai eore rvevpdtwv), he evidently means the 
charismata, which he also calls “ spiritual gifts” (xiv, I: 
(nrotre Ta mvevpatixa), These spirits, he adds, are subject to 
the prophets (xiv, 32: spiritus prophetarum prophetis subjecti 
sunt), because the possessors of the charismata have the free 
use of them. It is thus also that the following passage is 
explained (1 Cor. xiv, 14, 16): Nam si orem lingua, spiritus 
(rvedpa) meus orat, mens (vovs) autem mea sine fructu est. Quid 
ergo est? Orabo spiritu, orabo et mente; psallam spiritu, 
psallam et mente. Celerum si benedixeris spiritu, qui supplet 
locum idiotae, quomodo ditet, Amen, super tuam benedictionem ? 
quoniam quid dicas, nescit, It is a question here of the 
charisma of the gift of tongues, permitting a neophyte to pray 
in a language not understood by himself or his hearers. His 
spirit (that is, he himself under the influence of the Holy 
Spirit) prayed and blessed God ; but his intellect was inactive, 
and the ordinary hearer (tdiota=the simple Christian, un- 
endowed with the charisma of interpretation) could not join 
in his prayer and thanksgivings by saying amen as usual.— 
Besides the numerous cases where spirit signifies the charis- 
matical manifestation of the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. v, 19; 
2 Thess, 11, 2), spirit has the same meanings as in the pre- 
ceding paragraph with the addition of the supernatural 
element. Thus in the final salutation of the Epistles the 
Apostle says indiscriminately : Grace be with you (Rom. xvi, 24 ; 
y Cor. xvi) 23572 Cor-pxit, 135° E phevivig- Col iv, wae 
or with your spirit (Gal. vi, 18; Phil. iv, 23; 2 Tim. iv, 22; 
Philem. 25). The expression “spirit of strength, charity, 
and temperance” is modelled on “‘spirit of fear” (2 Tim. i, 7); 
“the spirit of sonship” on ‘the spirit of servitude” (Rom. 
viii, 15) ; so, too, the ‘spirit of ‘faith’ (2°Cor™ iv, 13)" ihe 
spirit of meekness” (Gal. vi, 1). The question is to know 
whether, in such usual expressions, the relation to the Holy 
Spirit is always distinctly perceptible. 

(C) The Person of the Holy Spirit.—In a general way it can 
be stated as a principle that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of 
Christ, and the Holy Spirit all designate the actual Person of 
the Holy Spirit and not his action in us. Yet the rule 
requires caution in use (Acts vi, 5; x, 38; xi, 24; xili, 52), 
even in the case of St Paul (2 Cor. vi, 6: in suavitate, in 
Spiritu sancto, in charitate non ficta [a long list of works and 
virtues, amidst which appears the Holy Spirit]). In any case, 
the surest rule is to examine whether any personal functions 
are attributed to the Spirit, or whether he is placed in 
opposition to the other two Persons. 


DETACHED NOTES 407 


3. All exegetes are agreed in declaring that the distinction 
is a very delicate one. This will be appreciated if Rom. viii, 
2-16 be examined. Out of seventeen cases where the word 
spirit appears, the present Vulgate writes Spiritus with a 
capital letter only four times (apart from the requirements of 
punctuation)—that is to say, when the Spirit is in opposition 
to the Son or to the Father, or forms an antithesis to our 
spirit, Our supernaturalized intellect. It writes Spiritus Dei, 
doubtless taking Dei in the sense of God without distinction of 
Persons and correcting the Sixtine MS., which had adopted 
the reading Spiritus Dei. Cornely finds the Holy Spirit in the 
majority of cases (eleven times out of seventeen). 

Another very instructive example is Gal. Vv, 16-25. + Here, 
out of seven cases, the Vulgate only once regards Spiritus as a 
proper name; for the initial capital letter is due to the 
punctuation, as the context proves. Cornely, who is not very 
consistent with himself, puts small letters everywhere. On 
the contrary, Lightfoot (Galatians, 1892, p. 210) thinks that 
‘‘in this whole passage the rvedpa is Clearly the divine Spirit ; 
for the human spirit, left to itself, is not the enemy of the 
flesh.” No doubt; but the essential point is to know whether 
it is a question here of the Person of the Holy Spirit or of his 
action in us, of the sanctifying and quickening Spirit or of the 
sanctified and quickened soul. 


NOTE P—ANGELS AND DEMONS 


I—JEwIsH IDEAS OF THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 


The Sources—On seeing the immense role which super- 
natural beings play in the literature and religion of the 
Semitic peoples, we are struck by the small amount of space 
they occupy in the Old Testament, without even excepting 
the deuterocanonical books. Oesterley has indeed tried to 
prove that this contrast is only apparent, and that there is in 
the Bible a multitude of latent allusions to spirits and demons 
(The Demonology of the O.T. in the Expositor, seventh series, 
vol. ili, 1907, pp. 316-332, 527-544), but he has not succeeded 
in making his thesis probable. What a difference between 
the Bible and the Apocrypha: the Book of Enoch, the Testa- 
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Book of the Jubilees,and the 
Life of Adam! Here, a mad phantasmagoria peoples heaven 
and earth with supernatural beings, bearing fantastic names 
and having strange forms, who seem by themselves alone to 
hill the terrestrial stage. In the rabbinical theology it is still 
worse, except in the Mishna, where these speculations have 
little chance to display themselves. Whoever is interested in 
these extravagant dreams of disordered brains can consult 
one of the numerous authors who treat of the subject; he 
will be embarrassed to know what to choose out of the mass. 
Let us cite only: Kohut, Die judische Angelologie und Daémono- 
logie, Leipzig, 1866; Eisenmenger, Das entdeckte Judentum, 
Konigsberg, 1711 (very curious details of the origin, habitat, 
functions, and daily occupations of the demons) ; Weber, 
Jtdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter 
Schriften, Leipzig, 1897 ; Schwab, Vocabulaire de Pangélologie 
dapres les manuscrits hébreux de la Biblioth. nat., Paris, 1897, 
and Supplément au Vocab. de langél., 1899; Edersheim, Life 
and Times of Jesus, London, 1g01 (Appendix xiii: Jewish 
Angelology and Demonology, vol. ii, pp. 748-763) ; Bousset, 
Die Religion des Judentums im neutest, Zeitalter?, Berlin, 1906 ; 
L. Hackspill, L’angélologie juive a l’époque néo-testamentaire in 
Rev. Bibl., xi, 1902, pp. 527-550; J. B. Frey, L’angélologie 
juive au temps de J.C. in Rev. des sciences phil. et théol., v, IQII, 
pp. 75-110; articles on Angelology and Demonology in the 
Jewish Encyclopedia, vols. i and iv; articles on Angel, Demon, 


Devil in the Diction. of the Bible and the Diction. of the A post. 
Church, by Hastings. 


II—DISTINCTION BETWEEN ANGELS AND DEMONS 


1. Gradual distinction of good and bad Angels.—In profane 
literature the word dyyeXos (masculine or feminine) signifies 
always a messenger or envoy (it is the special title of Iris, 

408 . 


DETACHED NOTES 409 


messenger of the gods) ; it never has the sense which we give . 
to the word angel.—In Homer, Saéuwv and 6eés are almost 
synonymous. However, a notable difference appears in the 
adjective Sacudvios, which is no more the equivalent of 6eios. 
Aaipwy signifies the divine influence rather than the divine 
person, and it is generally an ill-omened influence. For 
Hesiod the daipoves were demigods, descendants of the race 
created by the gods of Olympus in the golden age. Later, 
among the writers of tragedies, the daipwv was destiny, but 
rather a fatal one. Nevertheless the bad meaning did not 
become general and, during the most. brilliant period of 
Greek literature, daéuwv was used in a good as well as in a bad 
sense.—The accusation against Socrates was that of importing 
strange gods into Athens (Xenophon, Memorab., Ley the KOLO. 
Saipovia eiohepe; cf. Plato, Afol., 268). It is curious to see 
the Athenians imputing the same designs to Paul (Acts xvi, 18: 
fevov daipoviwy Katayyedets).—On the contrary, although in the 
Septuagint, and even in the New Testament, the word ayyedos 
is sometimes taken in the common meaning of messenger, it 
denotes almost always a celestial spirit acting as an inter- 
mediary between God and men. On the other hand, the 
neuter adjective taken as a noun, Sauoviov has always an 
unfavourable sense, if Acts Xvil, 18 be excepted, where St 
Luke makes the pagans speak their ordinary language. The 
word éaipwv is not used in the Bible, except in Mark Villea3 1 
On this point we know that Philo abandons biblical and 
Jewish tradition, in order to accommodate himself as much as 
possible to the language and ideas of the Greek philosophers. 


2. According to the Talmud and the Bible, too, angels and 
demons are good creatures, as originally made by God; and 
demons are only fallen angels.—The Jews never cast a doubt 
upon this truth, so thoroughly did the dogma of one only 
God, Creator of all things, profoundly rooted in their minds, 
make them immune from the assaults of Greek or Persian 
dualism. They merely discussed the date of the creation of 
the angels, fixed by some on the second day and by others on 
the fifth, but all agreed in Saying (according to Job RXV 
Dan. vii, 10) that their number rose to millions and thousands 
of millions. 

What was the origin of the bad angels? In the Life of 
Adam and Eve, 12-16 (Kautsch, Pseudepigr., PP. 513-514), 
Satan relates how, when God had formed man in his image 
and likeness, Michael invited all the angels to come and 
adore the image of God; but Satan and his companions 
refused under the pretext that man was inferior to them ; 
that is why they were banished from heaven and driven 
down to earth. The Book (in the Slavonic language) of the 
Secrets of Enoch (xxix, 4-5, rec. A; cf. Xxxi, 36) gives a 


410 THE THEOLOGY: OF ST PAUL 


picturesque description of this fall. Another version, recon- 
cilable moreover with the first, although admittedly the story 
of another fall of angels, was well accredited in the early 
Church, thanks to the Book of Enoch (vi-xi): Two hundred 
angels, commanded by Semyaza, fell in love with the beauty 
of the daughters of men and wedded them. For having 
taught men magic, astrology, and other fatal sciences, they 
were placed in chains by the four archangels and await the 
day of judgement in a dark dungeon, which does not, how- 
ever, prevent them from pursuing their evil deeds (xix). 
Their descendants, as wicked as they are, complete their 
work.—Fanciful speculations about the origin of the demons 
are infinite. R. Bechai claimed that Satan had been created 
at the same time as Eve, and he advanced for this the 
singular proof that the letter samech, by which the name of 
Satan was sometimes written in Hebrew, does not appear 
before Gen. ii, 21, where the formation of woman is related. 
Others think that the demons were created on the sixth day, 
at the moment when the Sabbath was about to begin, so that 
God had not the time to give them a body. Some say that, 
for 130 years after his transgression, Adam abstained from all 
conjugal connection with Eve in order not to condemn his 
children to the curse. But, while he was asleep, the female 
demon Lilith had connection with him, while a male demon 
took advantage of Eve without her knowing it. From the 
fact that Adam, at the age of 130 years, “ begat a being in his 
own likeness” (Gen. v, 3), it was concluded that he had, up 
to that time, begotten beings of a different nature. In Weber 
(Judische Theol.”, pp. 253-254) and in Eisenmenger (Entdecktes 
Judentum, vol. ii, chap. viii, pp. 406-415) many similar 
stories are found. 


3. In the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the Talmud, the demons, by 
whatever name they are called and whatever may be their origin, 
are always represented as perverse and maleficent beings, as the 
enemtes of God, the adversaries of man, and the instigators of sin. 
—WNetther the Bible, nor the Apocrypha, nor the Talmud recognize 
a class of spiritual beings, intermediary between the angels and 
demons, and who are to be classed netther with the demons, 
the subjects of Satan, nor with the angels, the servants of God.— 
These two propositions, of indisputable truth and extreme 
importance, proceed from the fact that the demons, always at 
war with man, God and the good angels, are designated by 
names which put them in relation with evil or with sin. The 
word ‘‘demons” always has an unfavourable meaning in the 
Bible. Indeed, dauova, in the Septuagint, is the translation of 
the various appellations of the false gods, p»SSx, p»inyiy, pa, 
ete., and an idea of impiety and perversity is necessarily 
connected with it. Each time that the demons are given a 


DETACHED NOTES 411 


favourable or neutral name, an epithet or definitive term fore- 
stalls misunderstanding. Jewish theology—and the New 
Testament—give the demons very characteristic names, which 
do not allow us to confound them with the good angels or to 
rank them in a special category, between good and evil. It 
calls them |‘? (malefactors), »w’3 pn (wicked spirits), 
NNDID PN (impure spirits). 


I1I—H1ERARCHY OF ANGELS AND DEMONS 


The angels of the Old Testament are hardly distinguishable 
from one another. Their whole reason for existing is to 
deliver messages or to execute a divine command. Thus the 
person disappears behind the function. Yet the fact that 
they are sometimes represented as an army proves that a 
certain hierarchy was established among them; for there is 
no organized army without a recognized authority. Three of 
these chiefs are named in the most recent books : Michael, 
‘‘the prince of Israel” (Dan. x, 21) or “the great prince” 
(Dan. xii, 1); Gabriel, who explains to Daniel the prophecy 
of Jeremias concerning the seventy weeks (Dan. viii, £5610) % 
Raphael, ‘one of the seven angels who stand before the 
throne of God to offer to him the prayers of the saints” 
(Tob. xii, 12-15 ; Apoc. i, 4). Cf. Lebreton, Origins du dogme 
de la Trimté*, 1919, Note H, On the seven spirits who are before 
the throne of God. 

In the period of Judaism, the group of the archangels was 
the most celebrated. It included sometimes seven names, 
arranged thus in the Book of Enoch, xx: Uriel, Raphael, 
Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel, Remiel ; sometimes six—for 
example, in the targum of Jonathan on Deut. xxxiv, 6; at 
other times only four (Enoch, ix, 1: Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, 
Raphael), enumerated without any fixed order (cf. Enoch, x, I, 
4,9, 11; xl, 2, 9; liv, 8, 9, 12); sometimes five with different 
names (Orac. Sibyll., ii, 214-215). Another group of celestial 
spirits, often referred to, were the Seraphim, the Cherubim, 
and the Ophanim, “who never sleep and who guard the 
throne of the divine majesty” (Enoch, lxxi, 7). 

The military organization of the demons is much more 
complete than that of the good angels. The Book of Enoch 
mentions, besides the commander-in-chief of the two hundred 
fallen angels, their twenty decurions (vi, 7, 8); elsewhere 
centurions are spoken of, and chiefs of fifty and decurions 
(xix, 3). But usually the organization is not carried so far; 
only one supreme chief is named, to whom the crowd of 
subjects yields obedience. This chief is called by different 
appellations which can be changed with one another.— 
(a) Satan, or the devil. Satan is a Hebrew word, which signi- 
fies “‘adversary ” or ‘accuser’ (an adverse party in a court 


412 THE GiHEOLOGY ORAS TEPALE 


of justice) and has passed into Arabic (shaytan) and into 
Syriac (safana) with the Hebrew meaning. Akin to it is the 
Assyrian mushtatinu (hostile) and probably also the Ethiopian 
Mastéma, which designates the chief of the demons. In 
Hebrew Satan is an appellative noun and takes the detinite 
article (the Adversary par excellence), except in 1 Chron. xxi, I 
where, becoming. a proper noun, it omits the article. The 
Septuagint translated it by d:aBodAos, out of which the Arabs 
have made Jblis: the Greek equivalent xariyopos, under the 
form of 7)9yp, is found among the Rabbis and in the Apoca- 
lypse (xii, I0: 6 xarjyywp), The authors of the N.T. use 
indifferently 6 caravaés and 6 duaBodos, and the Apocalypse 
formally establishes the synonymy between the two terms 
(xx, 2: 6 ddus 6 dpxaios, ds éertiv AtdBodos xat 6 Latravas).— 
(5) Belial. This word in Hebrew is not a proper name; it 
signifies etymologically—although the etymology is disputed 
—“profitless, useless,” and by litotes ‘‘bad, pernicious.” 
Belial appears more than thirty times in the Testaments of the 
Patrnarchs under the form of Beliar, also found in St Paul 
(2 Cor. vi, 15). The identity between Satan and Belial 
appears, for example, in the Ascension of Isatas (ii, 1-4), where 
the expressions “to serve Satan” and ‘‘to serve Belial” are 
synonymous.—(c) Sammael, in the same place in the Ascension 
of Isatas, is another synonym of Satan. He is often mentioned 
in the Talmud, where he is called the ‘‘ chief of the satans”’ 
(Debarim rabba, c. 11).—(d) Asmodeus is called “king of the 
demons” in the Hebrew and Aramaic versions of the Book of 
Tobias (iii. 8-17), he is presented as ‘‘ chief of the demons” in 
the Talmud (Sofa, 48, a-b), and in the Targum of Ecclesiastes 
(i, 12). It was once generally admitted that Asmodeus is 
derived from the Persian aéshma daeva, but Moulton (Expository 
Times, vol. xi, I900, pp. 257-260) contests this derivation.— 
(¢) Belzebuth (Ba’ al-zebiib=“ the god of [t.e., who keeps off] 
flies” of Accaron) is, under the form of Bee(eBovA or BeeACeBovr, 
named. by the Synoptists “prince of demons” (Matt. xii, 24 ; 
Luke xi, 15: 0 dpywv tov datpoviwv), and is consequently iden- 
tified with Satan. It results clearly from the context that the 
word is borrowed from the terminology of the Jews. 

The synonymy of all these words (the devil, Satan, Belial, 
Asmodeus, Sammael, Belzebuth) is certain: each of these 
persons is represented as the supreme chief of all the demons 
and as the leader of all the legions hostile to God. What is 
attributed to one of them, is in the same work or in different 
works attributed to the other.—They are never opposed to 
one another ; and, when they are named together, they fill 
the same role. Finally, the synonymy is positively stated in 
a certain number of texts.—But it is especially important 
to note that all these names are used in two very different 
meanings: as individual beings guiding the army of demons, 


DETACHED NOTES 413 


and as collective beings representing all the powers hostile to 
God and personifying the evil principle. 


IV—-THrE DEMONS IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


St Paul’s doctrine of demons has nothing characteristic 
about it. It can hardly be called a doctrine, as the Apostle 
for the most part uses current speech without making it a 
subject of formal affirmation. We shall limit ourselves to 
three remarks which give rise to interesting comparisons. 


1. Demons and Sin.—Satan was a “murderer from the 
beginning” (John viii, 44) because of his active part in man’s 
first sin. All the sacred authors have in mind the story of 
Genesis (ili, I-13), according to which “the Serpent seduced 
Eve by his subtlety ” (2 Cor. xi, 3), and they know that in con- 
sequence of sin ‘‘death entered into the world through the 
envy of the devil” (Wisd. ii, 24). But the great seducer 
pursues his work of death. Heis the Tempter par excellence 
(I Thess. iii, 5: 6 wewpd(wv.; cf. 1 Cor. vii, 5). There is no 
snare that he does not set for the faithful (2 Cor. 1, II; 
I Tim. iii, 7; 2 Tim. ii, 16), nor difficulty that he does not 
raise for the preachers of the Gospel (2 Cor. ii, 11; 1 Thess. 
li, 18); but a sincere faith protects us from his darts 
(Eph. vi, 16), and God will never permit a temptation beyond 
our strength (1 Cor. x, 13: cf Rom. xvi, 20). 

These same ideas are met at every step in Jewish theology. 
According to the Apocrypha and the Talmud, Satan made use 
of the serpent to ruin the first human pair. Since then he 
stirs up the tendency to evil (yin ay) with which he seems 
sometimes to be confused. Cf. Weber, Jad. Theol.?, pp. 237 
and 252. Before man had lost the image of God, he was a 
sacred being (viaP) ; but subsequently he became unholy (bn) 
and subject to maleficent spirits (Bereshith rabba, c. 23). The 
Ethiopan Enoch (Ixix, 6) thinks that he knows the name of the 
seducer of Eve; he is called, he says, Gadreel. 


2. Abode of the Demons.—The demons like to dwell (a) in the 
atmosphere (Eph. ii,2: a4pxwv tis éoveias tod aépos), in the lower 
heavens bordering on the earth(Eph. vi, 12 : pds Ta rvevpatixa 
THS Tovnplas ev Tots erovpaviors) ;—(b) in desert places (Matt. Xi 3e 
Luke xi, 24: 80 aviépwv térwv; cf. Is. xiii, 21 ; xxxiv, 14, and 
the ceremony of the scape-goat sent to Azazel in the desert) ; 
—(c) near tombs (Mark v, 2; Matt. viii, 28 ; Luke vii, 27) ;— 
(d@) in general in dark and filthy places (Mark v, 12; Matt. vii, 31; 
Luke vii, 33 [the swine of Gadara]; Eph. vi, 12: mpds tous 
KOoLOKpaTopas TOV aKOTOVs TovTOV, but this is perhaps a figurative 
expression ; cf. Col. i, 13: tys é£ovaias t6u oKdTovs). 

That the demons inhabit the air is an opinion quite common 
in Jewish literature. According to Philo, the air (that is to 


414 THE THEOLOGY OF «ST PAUL 


say, the space included between the earth and the moon) 
‘is the abode of disembodied souls” (De somniis, i, 22, 
Mangey, i, 641); it is thus that he calls the daéuoves, who are 
his angels and demons. For ‘those whom the philosophers 
call daiuoves, Moses was accustomed to call angels, and 
these are the souls which fly in the air” (De gigant., 2; 
Mangey, i, 263: yYvyal 8 eloe kata Tov dépa TeTOpEVaL). See 
Lemonnyer, L’air comme séjour d’anges d’aprés Phulon, in 
Revue des sciences phil. et théol., 1907, pp. 305-311.—According 
to R. Bechai (Explic. du Pentat., fol. go, col. 1), the demons are 
divided into three classes : some reside in the air, and it is they 
who send us dreams; others dwell in man to incite him to 
sin ; and others are immersed in the depths of the sea, where 
they create earthquakes. 


3. Demons and Idols —The Old Testament identifies the 
gods of the pagans with demons, Ps. xcv, 5: mdvres of Oeol 
tov €Ovev Sarudvec, and Deut. xxxii, 17: €Ovcav Saipovious Kat ov 
eq (they offered sacrifices to demons and to a non-god = some- 
one who was not God), St Paul tacitly refers to this last 
text in his teaching concerning the meats offered to idols, 
i Cor. x, 20: & Ovovow Sarpoviors Kat od Gep Ovovow. This brings 
the application : Nolo vos fieri socios daemoniorum. The idea 
was common in Judaism. Cf. Enoch, xcix, 7 (quoted by 
Tertullian, De tdol., 4); Jubil., i, 11 ; xxii, 17. It is certain that 
the demons are the instigators of idolatry and that the worship 
paid to idols is advantageous to them, whatever may be the 
intention of the idolaters themselves. 


V—THE CHOIRS OF ANGELS ACCORDING TO ST PAUL 


The list of nine choirs of angels has been made, as everyone 
knows, by taking as a central nucleus the five names furnished 
by St Paul (Eph. i, 21; Col. i, 16: principalities, powers, 
virtues, dominations and thrones), then by putting at the head 
of these the seraphim and cherubim of the Old Testament, and 
at the end the archangels and angels mentioned here and there 
in the Bible. It is difficult to understand what principle could 
have directed the classification of the intermediary choirs, 
since St Paul has no fixed order. The Pseudo-Dionysius the 
Areopagite divides them into three classes (Siaxooprjoes), and 
describes them in this order, beginning with the most pertect 
(De cael. hierarchia, vi-ix, Migne, III, 200-272), The enumera- 
tion of the beginning dfffers a little. 

(I) 1 Seraphim. 2 Cherubim. 3 Thrones. 
(II) 4 Dominations. 5 Virtues. 6 Powers. 
(III) 7 Principalities. 8 Archangels. g Angels. 

The order is different in St Gregory the Great (Moralia, 

XxXxil, 23, No. 48, LXXVI, 665 : angels, archangels, thrones, 


DETACHED NOTES 415 


denominations, virtues, principalities, cherubim and sera- 
phim, and In Evang. homil. xxxiv, ibid. 1249 : angels, arch- 
angels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, 
cherubim and seraphim). St Gregory depends upon the 
Pseudo-Dionysius ; but we cannot say, as has sometimes been 
done, that the division of the angels in nine choirs is an 
invention of the latter, for it is found already in St Ambrose 
(Apol. Proph. David 5, XIV, 900) : Dominus noster Jesus . . . cut 
angelt et archangelt, virtutes et potestates et principatus, thront et 
dominationes, cherubim et seraphim indefesso obsequto serviebaut. 
The tract is authentic and dates from about 385; the text is 
that of the critical edition of Schenkl. As it is not probable 
that Dionysius borrows from Ambrose, both have probably 
borrowed from some previous Greek source, and in fact the 
Pseudo-Dionysius refers to an anonymous authority (ili, 200) : 
réoas 7 Oeoroyla ras ovpavious ovaias éevvéa KEKANKEV ExpavTOpLKais 
érwvuplas: tavtas 6 Oetos Hav teporedcotis eis Tpeis apopifer 
Tpradixas Svakorpnces. 

Apart from these two exceptions—three counting St 
Gregory—the theory of the nine orders is entirely unknown to 
the Greek and Latin Fathers, The interpolator of Ignatius, 
Ad Trallian., 5 (Funk, vol. ii, p. 64) counts mine classes of 
angels, but he includes in them the @ons and the armtes. 
St Irenaeus, Contra haeres., ii, 54 (VII, 818), enumerates once 
seven (omitting the cherubim and the seraphim), and once 
six (omitting also the thrones). The Apostolic Constitutions 
have once ten, viii, 12 (I, 1093: here are also the zons and 
the armies, but without the dominations), and once eleven 
(I, 1101 : the dominations included). Origen has sometimes 
four of them, Contra Cels., iv, 29 (XI, 1069 : thrones, domina- 
tions, powers and principalities), sometimes five, adding either 
angels, Contra Cels., vi, 71 (XI, 1405), or the gods, In Joan., 
i, 34 (XIV, 79). St. Cyril of Jerusalem enumerates ezght, 
omitting only the seraphim, Catech., xxiii, Mystag., v,6(XXXIII, 
III3) ; but see below. St Athanasius, ad Serap., il, 4 (XXVI, 
614, enumerates nine, substituting for thrones mapadeoos, but 
the text is very uncertain ; elsewhere, ad Serap., i, 13 (XXVI, 
561), he has only seven, omitting the virtues and the powers. 
There are seven also in Titus of Bostra, Contra Manitch., iii, and 
eight in Basil of Seleucia, Ovat., xxxix, 2 (LXXXV, 429: the 
archangels are wanting). St Basil the Great, De spiritu sancto, 
38 (XXXII, 136), enumerates only five (principalities, powers, 
virtues, thrones, dominations), but he adds: xai ei TLVeS ELLY 
érepat AoyiKat Gicers dxatovopacro.. St Gregory Nazianzen, Orat., 
xxviii, 31 (XXXVI, 72), finds eight, replacing the cherubim 
and seraphim by their Greek translation dvaBdces, AapmpoTyntes 
and qualifying all the orders enumerated as voepas Suvapers 
7) voas, which proves that he does not see a special order in 
the virtues. St Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunom., i (XLV, 345, 


416 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


348), expressly identifies the cherubim with the thrones, the 
seraphim with the virtues, and mentions neither the angels 
nor the archangels ; elsewhere, Im Cantic. hom., xv (XLIV, 
I100) his enumeration is still more difficult. The author of 
the Dzalogues attributed to St Cesarius, Dial., i, qu. xliv 
(XXXVIII, 912-913), reduces the number of choirs to seven, 
eliminating also the cherubim and seraphim. It is idle to 
push our investigations further ; we should not get much from 
St Methodius, De resurr., 10 (XVIII, 280), nor from Eusebius, 
De laud. Constant., i, 1 (XX. 1320) ; we should rather get only 
difficulties from them. But St Ephrem (Opera syriaca, vol. i, 
p- 270) furnishes us with ten choirs, the first of which is 
formed of the gods; Theodoret eight, by regarding the 
virtues as a generic term, or by identifying thrones and 
cherubim. 

The Fathers who carry with them most authority warn us 
that our researches will be endless. We have heard what St 
Basil says. St Hilary, In Psalm, cxxxv. 10 (IX, 773-774), is 
no more encouraging : De numero Apostolus nihil docuit ; et 
nescio an tacuertt an rgnoraverit. From Origen we get scarcely 
any hope, De Princtp., I, v, 1 (XI, 157) on Eph. i, 21: Ex quo 
ostendit esse quaedam praeter haec quae commemoravit, quae 
nominentur quidam in hoc saeculo, non tamen ab ipso enumerata 
nunc fuerint, forte nec ab alio aliquo intellecta : esse vero alia 
quae in hoc saeculo quidam non nominentur, in futuro tamen 
nominabuntur. St Jerome, commenting on the same text 
(XXVI, 461), seizes on this idea; especially Contra Jovin., ii, 28 
(XXIII, 325) : Et cetera ministeriorum vocabula, quae nec nos 
possumus nominare, nec ipsum Paulum puto, ut in gravi 
corpusculo constitutum, enumerare valuisse. The text of St 
Augustine is well known, Contra Priscill., ii (XLII, 678) : Certe 
aut Apostolus: Sive sedes (Opévor), sive dominationes, sive 
principatus, sive potestates. Et esse itaque sedes, dominationes, 
principatus, potestates, in caelestibus apparatibus firmissime 
credo, et differve aliquid indubttata fide teneo. Sed quo me con- 
temnas, quem magnum putas esse doctorem, quaenam ista sint et 
quid inter se differant nescio. Cf. Enchirid., 58 (XL, 259); In 
Psalm., \xxix, 2 (XXXVI, 1021); In Psalm., xcviii, 3 (XXXVII, 
1259); Coll. cum Maxim., 9 (XLII, 727), etc.—St Chrysostom, 
who once enumerates nine orders (In Genes. hom.., iv, 5), like- 
wise believes that there are others, De incomprehens. hom., iv 
(XLIX, 729): Eliot yap eiot xat érepar Suvdpers Ov ovde TA 6vOpara 
topev, Finally, St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., xv, 12 (XXXII, 
705), makes a virulent attack on the heretics who flatter 
themselves that they know all the mysteries of Christ, yet are 
powerless to say in what respect the angels differ. 

In the face of these disagreements and uncertainties of 
Catholic tradition, all speculation on the subject would be 
in vain. 


NOTE Q—THE ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD 


In this volume we have studied at sufficient length the two 
texts giving four times the remarkable expression Ta OTOLX ELA 
Tov Kdcpou, elementa mundi (Gal. iv, 3,9; Col. ii, 8, 20). As 
there is less agreement than ever as to the precise meaning of 
this utterance, it is well to submit it to an exact analysis, 
examining : (1) The meaning of the word orocxetov ; (2) the 
meaning of the word xécpos in St Paul; (3) the sense of the 
entire phrase. 


I—THE SIGNIFICANT EVOLUTION OF THE WORD orotxetov 


I. The word orotxeiov—from orotxos, rank, file, from oreixw, 
to align, to march in order—denotes things arranged, placed in 
ranks. Aristophanes calls the shaft of a gnomon or sundial 
by this word (Ecclestaz, 65 : drav 7 Sexadmovy Td orotxeior, 
‘when the gnomon [1.e, the shadow of it] is ten feet long”’). 
The ororxyeiov sometimes signifies a column, a shaft, a statue, 
but the original meaning seems to be a base. Thence, in a 
parallel manner two meanings were derived from a usage 
common in the classic age: the orotye’a were the letters of the 
alphabet, not so much as signs as sounds, not so much as 
forms of writing as elements of speech (Dionysius of Halic., 
De comp. verb., 14) ; and they designated also the elements of 
which the material world is composed (fire, air, water, and 
earth). Empedocles, who had fixed the number of these at 
four, called them frfwepara, but Plato, as Eudemus assures us, 
designated them by the name of gro.xeia (Sophist., 2528 ; 
Tim., 488), because the word frfwuara was unknown in Attic 
speech. This name of crorxeia, to denote the elements of matter, 
was adopted by the philosophers of the Lyceum and the 
Portico; only Aristotle added a fifth element—the ether. 
Later, the Epicureans called the atoms crovxeta ; Lucretius 
translated this by elementa. 


2. The alphabetical meaning gave rise to a metaphorical 
signification, by virtue of which the elements (crocxeia) became 
the rudiments, the first principles and, so to speak, the 
alphabet, thea b cof ascience orart. This signification, which 
goes back at least to Isocrates, and was made popular by the 
Elements of Euclid, was very common in New Testament 
times, when crotxeodv was used to denote “teaching the 
rudiments,” and orocyeiwors for “ instruction, education.” See 
the examples in Passow. Everyone knows that elementa in 
Latin possessed the same figurative meaning (Horace, Sat. I, 
i, 20), which we shall also find in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
(v, 12: mdAw xpelav exere Tod Siddoxew tpas Twa TA TToLXEIa THS 

Ml. 417 27 


418 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


apxis tav oyiwy rod Oeov). So far we are completely on 
Classic ground. 


3. Under the influence of astrology a new meaning was sub- 
sequently given a place of great honour in the schools of both 
the Stoics and the Pythagoreans. It became the custom to 
designate the seven planets by the seven vowels of the Greek 
alphabet and to call them “the celestial elements ” (Ta oToryeia 
ovpdvia). See Diels, Elementum, eine Vorarbeit, etc., Leipzig, 
1899, p. 44. This appellation was afterwards extended to all 
the constellations and to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, 
unless indeed these signs and constellations had been 
previously named thus as being the primordial elements 
of which the heavens are composed. Itis not at all certain that 
this usage goes back to the beginning of the Christian era. 
The first known example is found in Diogenes Laertius (vi, 9), 
who relates, according to Hippobotos, that Menedemus, 
among other eccentricities, wore on his head an arcadian hat 
on which were woven the twelve signs of the Zodiac (ro 
dwdexa orouxeia) ; but it is not certain that the expression comes 
from Hippobotos, and, if it does, that would not take us back 
to St Paul. However, from the second century examples 
abound. St Justin speaks of the celestial elements (ra ovpavia 
arotxeta, Apol., 1i,5 ; of. Tryph., 23); Polycrates of Ephesus, in 
his letter to Pope Victor, calls the Apastles John and Philip 
peyada orocxeia (in Eusebius, Hist. III, xxxi, 3) ; see also 
Athenagoras, Apol., 16 ; Theophilus, ad Autol., i, 4 (WAvos Kai 
veAivy Kal dorépes ororxeia eiciv), This meaning passed into 
Latin and is found in Lactantius (Instit., ii, 6) and in St Jerome 
(Epist., cxx, 4: Omnis hebdomada . . . quam ethnict idolorum et 
elementorum nominibus appellant). 


4. At a later period the derivation is more difficult to follow : 
but we find it less interesting the further we go from the 
apostolic age. At that time it was universally believed that 
the stars were endowed with life. It was, therefore, quite 
natural to name orocxeiov not only the star itself, but the 
spirit which inhabits it, or rather the occult influence which 
it was thought to produce, Thanks tc the progress of magic, 
every mysterious influence was called thus, whether good or 
bad, astral or otherwise. The orocyeiov becomes “a charm, a 
talisman,” and forms the derivations oroxevodv (to enchant) and 
OTOLXElwors, TTOLXELwpaTiKol. Examples of this sort abound in 
Byzantine literature. See Sophocles, Greek Lexicon. F inally, 
the Greeks of our time give this name to everything the 
influence of which their superstition fears, to the nymphs of 
the groves and streams, to ghosts, and to the evil eye. An 
enchanted spring is for them oroxedpevo rnyd&; a haunted 
house is orocxedpevo omit. Cf. G. F. Abbott, Macedonian 


DETACHED NOTES 419 


Folklore, Cambridge, 1903, pp. 249-250. The source of this 
meaning may be relatively ancient. Cf. Apotelesmata A polloni 
Tyanensis, ed. Nau, in Graffin’s Patrol. syriaca, vol. ii, 1376-7 
(at a certain hour every oroxefov of birds, serpents and 
quadrupeds is enchanted). 

This scale of meanings therefore ensues : 


(a) A column, support, shaft, the pointer of a sun-dial 
(Aristophanes). c 

(b) Elements of matter and speech (fifth and fourth 

| centuries B.C.). 

(c) Elements of arts and sctences (classic age). 

(d) Elements of the heavens, planets, constellations, 
Zodiac (second century A.D.). 

(e) Astral or magical influence of celestial bodies (Byzan- 
tine age). 

(f) Everything that casts a spell (modern folklore). 


II—THE ‘‘ WORLD” IN THE WRITINGS OF ST PAUL 


The primordial meaning of xécpos, which remained classic, 
is ‘ beauty” and “ order.” This is also the usual meaning in 
the Septuagint, but the only example of it in the New Testa- 
ment is in I Pet. iii, 3 (evdvoewv ipariwy Koopos). 

1. The world 1s the universe, the whole of the material creation. 
—Pythagoras is said to have been the first to call xéopos either 
the universe (according to Plutarch, De placit. philos., ii, 1; 
Op. mor., p. 886B) or the heavens (according to Favorinus 
quoted by Diogenes Laertius, vili, 48) on account of their 
order and beauty. The first meaning is not known to the 
writers of the Septuagint; but it often appears in the 
deuterocanonical books, as well as in the New Testa- 
ment, and always, it seems, in relation to the creative act or 
sovereignty of God: Acts xvii, 24 (6 Oeds 6 roujoas rdv 
xoopov); Rom. i, 20 (ard xricews kocpov); Eph. i, 4: (xpd 
kataBoAns koopov). Kdopos is never met with in the Bible in 
the special sense of ‘‘ heaven” which it frequently has in the 
classics (Plato, Tim. 288 [ovpavds 7 xécpos] ; Isocrates, iv, 179 
[yas amrdons tHs rd TO KOTpH KEewerns]; Xenophon, Memor., 
Fey Oh 


2. The world is also “‘ the earth as the abode of man,”’ or, more 
generally, ‘“‘ the milieu tn which the human race moves.’’—This 
meaning, unknown to classic Greek and rare in the profane 
literature of any epoch, is quite common in the New 
Testament. At birth, man brings nothing into the world 
(x Tim. vi, 7) ; in order to avoid contact with sinners, it would 
be necessary to go out of the world (1. Cor. v, 10); Abraham 


420 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


was the heir of the world (Rom. iv, 13) ; an idol is nothing in 
the world (x. Cor. viii, 4); the Gentiles, before their conversion, 
were without God in the wovld (Eph. ii, 12) ; the faith is 
preached in the whole world (Col, i, 6; cf. Rom. i, 8; 
I. Tim. iii, 16). Yet several of these examples may be taken 
as referring not to the terrestrial globe, but to the human 
race which inhabits it, and we thus revert to the following 
meaning ; or else a secondary idea is mingled with it, and 
this we shall consider later. 


3. The world is also the human race, the earth's inhabitants. 
—This meaning is clear in all the passages in which God 
is represented as the Judge of the world (Rom. iii, 6 [was 
Kpwel 6 Oeds Tov Kéopov; cfi I Cor. vi, 2; xi, 32), and the world 
as a debtor to divine justice (Rom. iii, 19: trdduxos . . . mas 
6 koopos T) Oew) ; but it is indisputable in many other cases: 
““God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself” 
(2 Cor. v, 19); “by one man sin entered into the world” 
(Rom. v, 12; cf. v, 13), and has thus brought into all men 
the principle of death; Paul declares that his conduct in the 
world—that is, among men—has not been inspired by carnal 
wisdom but by the grace of God (2 Cor. 1, 12). The expres- 
sion ‘‘refuse of the world” is explained by “the offscouring 
of all” (1 Cor. iv, 13); and if the other Apostles are called 
“lights in the world” (Phil. 11, 15), it is doubtless in order 
to enlighten the human race rather than the terrestrial globe. 


4. Finally, St Paul often uses the world, etther as the present 
abode of man or as the totality of present humanity, in a dero- 
gatory sense, due to an expressed or implied contrast with a 
superior world or a regenerated humamty.—The world thus 
understood is not always a corrupt and perverse world, but 
it is at least the world left to itself, destitute of divine grace, 
such as it is, and not such as it ought to be in order to 
correspond with God’s designs; in a word, it is the natural 
world, expressly or tacitly contrasted with the supernatural 
world. ‘God hath made foolish the wisdom of the world ” 
(x Cor. i, 20); “the world by wisdom knew not God” (i, 21) ; 
therefore God hath chosen to accomplish his work “the 
foolish things of the world, the weak things of the world, 
the base things of the world” (1 Cor. i, 27, 28: Ta pwpa tov 
Kdcpov, Ta aoGevn TOU Kdcpov, TA ayevnh Tov Kdcpov), for by 
choosing them he transforms them. The Christian has not 
the spirit of the world, because he has received the Spirit 
of God and because these two spirits exclude one another 
(1 Cor. ii, 12) ; indeed, “ the wisdom of this world is foolish- 
ness with God”’ (1 Cor. i, 19). We see from these examples, 
especially the last, what sort of antithesis helps the derogatory 
meaning to slip in. The world is properly speaking this 


DETACHED NOTES 421 


world (6 xdapos ofros), where everything is weakness, impo- 
tence, corruption, nothingness, the world as measured by the 
standard of the present age (Eph. ii, 2: xara rév aidva rov 
kécpov Tovrov) ; the world, the fashion of which passeth away, 
which it is necessary to use but not abuse (1 Cor. vii, 31, 32), 
the sorrow of which worketh death (2 Cor. vii, 10). The 
derogatory sense is more or less accentuated according to 
the implied contrast; it reaches its climax when the world 
forms an antithesis to God or to his Spirit : ‘The world 
is crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal. vi, 14) ; between 
us there is nothing in common. But the contrast is not 
always so violent: the married man and woman “ think on 
the things of the world” (1 Cor. vii, 33, 34) ; it is an obstacle 
to holy meditations, but not an absolute bar to them. More- 
over, the opposition is not radical and essential ; it is so only 
so far as the world remains apart from supernatural influ- 
ences; but “God in Christ reconciles the world to himself ”’ 
(2 Cor. v, 19), and the obstinacy of Israel, from the provi- 
dential point of view, has been ‘“‘the riches of the world” 
(Rom. xi, 12) and “the reconciliation of the world” (xi, 15), 
because it has contributed to the conversion of the Gentiles. 
Here the world does not mean all humanity, but that portion 
of it deprived of the Mosaic revelation, We have purposely 
omitted the disputed expression 74 orovxeia Tod Koopov, but 
what we have just said may contribute to define its exact 
signification, or at least to exclude all the interpretations 
which would not harmonize with the Pauline notion of xocpos. 


III—MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION Té oTouxela TOU KOTpoU 


In his Entwicklung, published in 1851, Usteri wrote in 
regard to Gal. iv, 3, 9: “It is agreed to recognize that 
orovxeia means prima institutionts elementa, and carries on the 
metaphor begun by viru.” If he were living to-day Ustert 
would have to concede that the agreement is broken, although 
the common interpretation still remains that of the best 
exegetes and lexicographers (Lightfoot, Sieffert, Grimm, 
Cremer, etc.). 

(A) Zahn (Galaterbrief?, pp. 195-6) tries to revive an ex- 
planation already proposed by some old commentators. 
According to this, cro.xeta =the matter and the material 
things of which the world is made—the world itself as far as 
it is material.” From the point of view of classical philology 
this translation of ta orovyeia tov Kéopov might pass ; and, 
indeed, it has behind it the authority of a passage in Lucian 
(Amor., 19) and of St Irenzeus (Haeres., I, iv, 2; v, 5: TO. 
TwpaTiKa ToD Kéopov orotxeia)., But it is impossible to adapt it 
to the teaching of St Paul in the text quoted. 

(B) Lagercrantz (Elementum. Eine lexicologtsche Studte, 


422 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Upsala, 1911), relying on a text from the Shepherd of Hermas 
(Vis., III, xiii, 3), which he considers to have been mis- 
understood by his predecessors, seeks to establish in all the 
passages in the New Testament the meaning of foundation. 
His study will probably convince no one on this point, but 
should certainly be read, in spite of some fanciful hypotheses, 
in order to counteract the equally conjectural derivations of 
Diels, the principal advocate of the following explanation. 

(C) The crocxeia roi xécpov are, according to this, the 
elemental spirits, conceived of as personal or personified 
beings. All the partisans of this opinion are agreed on this 
word. But when they are asked what they mean by ele- 
mental spirits they give the most incongruous definitions, 
if, indeed, they deign to try to give one. Sometimes the 
Elementargeister are the angels who direct the courses of the 
stars, as imagined by rabbinical theology ; sometimes they 
are the spirits concealed in the material objects of animistic 
religions ; sometimes the deified forces of Stoic philosophy 
(Aoyou, Suvdéues), or the planetary influences of medizeval 
astrology, or superterrestrial powers uniting in themselves, 
in fantastical.confusion, irreconcilable characteristics. Ritschl, 
who was perhaps the first to introduce this exegesis, thought 
only of the angels who were the promulgators of the Law 
(Rechifertigung und Versohnung?, vol. ii, 252); and Spitta 
likens them to the crocxeia of 2 Pet. iii, 10, which, however, 
does not elucidate the question. 


Taking these divergencies into account, among the de- 
fenders of the Elementargeister are: Everling, Paulin. Ange- 
lologie und Démonologie, 1888, p. 55; Diels, Elementum, eine 
Vorarbeit zum griech. und latein. Thesaurus, Leipzig, 1899, 
PP: 44-47 ; Deissmann, in Encycl. Biblica, vol. ii, p. 1259; Reit- 
zenstein, Potmandres, Studien zur griechischagypt. und friih- 
christlichen Literatur, Leipzig, 1904; Bousset, Die Religion 
des Judentums*, 1906, p. 372; Haupt, on Col. ii, 8, 20, in 
Meyer’s Kommentar; Tobac, Le probleme de la justification 
dans St Paul, 1908, pp. 54-62; Protin, Les éléments du monde 
dans la pensée de St Paul, in Revue augustinienne, vol. xiv, 
1909, Pp. 71-74 ; Pfister, Die oro.xeia rod kdopov in den Briefen 
des Ap. Paulus, in Philologus, vol. \xix, 1910, pp. 411-427. 

We think that this interpretation of the orocxeta tov Koo pov 
has now reached and passed beyond the maximum of its 
popularity, and that it will decline little by little in proportion 
as its defects and difficulties are better estimated, and that 
its advocates will not let. themselves be fascinated by its 
specious attractiveness at first sight. We do not hesitate to 
reject it for the following reasons : (a) It gives orovyeiov a 
meaning which was not in common use at the time of the 
New Testament and only appeared much later in the 


DETACHED NOTES 423 


Byzantine language. Now, is it not absurd, for the better 
understanding of St Paul, to refer us to a very late text 
the meaning of which is in dispute? (Testam. Salomonts in 
Fleck, Anecdota sacra, Leipzig, 1837, and Migne, CXXII, 
1316-7 : “ Weare the orovyxeia, the dominators of the world, 
deception, discord, destiny [xAd@wv], and tempest’’).—(6) It 
does not safeguard the Pauline sense of the word kdcpos, and, 
to speak more correctly, it does not agree with any recognized 
meaning of this word.—(c) It imputes to St Paul a conception 
of “intermediary spirits” which is totally foreign to his 
Epistles, to the other writings of the New Testament, and 
even to contemporary Jewish thought. The Jews of that 
period admitted, indeed, that the stars and atmospheric 
agencies were directed by spirits, but they called those spirits 
rvevpara and not orovxeia, and it is not clear that they paid 
them a superstitious form of worship.—(@) It does not 
harmonize with the text and context of the two passages 
which are to be explained. The exegesis of these passages 
ought to have proved this.—(e) Finally, it is impossible to 
expound it with any clearness without discovering” its weak 
points, untenable positions, and contradictory aspects. Only 
its vagueness makes it acceptable. 


NOTE R—CHRISTOLOGICAL TEXTS 


I—List OF TEXTS 


The entire work of Paul is fundamentally only a Christo- 
logy, since it all centres in the Person or the mission of 
Christ ; but it has been thought right to take from it a certain 
number of variously remarkable extracts which concern the 


nature or the functions of the Son of God. 


It will suffice to 


refer the reader to the explanation of these passages. 


Eph. i, 3-14, Vol. II, pp. 85-92. 


(a) Rom. iii, 21-26, Vol. I, pp. 204, 205. 

(6b) Rom. v, 12-21, Vol. I, pp. 212-221. | (0) Eph. i, 23, Vol. II, p. 283. 

(c) Rom. viii, 3-4, Vol. II, pp. 163-165.| (#) Eph.iv, 12-16, Vol. I, pp. 305-307. 

(da) 1 Cor. xv, 44-49, Vol. II, pp. 172-| (q) Phil. 11, 5-11, Voi. 1, pp. 312-322 ; 
176. 456-465. 

(e) 2 Cor.v, 14-15, Vol. II, pp. 201-203.} (r) Col. i, 14-20, Vol. I, pp. 287-292. 

(f). 2 Cor. v, 16, Vol. IT, pp. 24-25. (s) Col. ii, 9, Vol. II, pp. 151-152. 

(g) 2 Cor. v, 18-20, Vol. II, pp. 219-220.} (@) Col. ii, 13-14, Vol. II, pp. 228-229. 

(h) 2 Cor. v, 21, Vol. II, pp. 204-205. | (4) Col. ii, 18-19, Vol. I, pp. 304-305. 

(tf) 2 Cor. vili, 9, Vol. I, p. 151. (v) -Col. ii, 20, Vol. I, p. 282; Vol. 11, 

(7) Gal. i, 1, Vol. II, pp. 120-121. p. 106. 

(k) Gal. iii, 13, Vol. II, pp. 205-208. | (w) 1 Tim. ii, 5, Vol. II, pp. 167-168. 

(2) Titus iii, 4-6, Vol. 1, pp. 331-332. 


Gal. ili, 19-20, Vol. I, p. 184; 
6 y) Heb. i, 1-3, Vol. I, pp. 367-374. 


Vol. II, 
(2) Heb. v, 1-4, Vol. 1, pp. 374-380. 


Pp. 90. 
(m) Gal. iv, 4-5, Vol. II, pp. 161-163. 


For the texts concerning the eternal relations of the Word 
to the heart of divinity, see the following note. We add 
below the exegesis of three other texts which have not found 
a place elsewhere. 


II—THE SUPERSCRIPTION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 
(Rom. i, I-7) 


1. Theological Ideas—It has been possible to say without 
exaggeration that the beginning of this Epistle is an abbrevi- 
ated Christology ; indeed few passages of Scripture concen- 
trate in less words more theological ideas.—(a) Definition of 
the apostolate of Paul, his election, vocation, and special 
mission to the Gentiles.—(b) Intimate and essential relation 
between the two Testaments, the first of which is the 
prophecy and type of the second, while the second is the 
antitype and realization of the first.—(c) Jesus Christ, Lord 
and Son of God, author of the divine call and of grace.— 
(2) Jesus, born of the blood of David according to the flesh. 
—(e) Jesus Christ established Son of God according to the 
spirit of sanctity. This last phrase requires an explanation 
which we give below. 

424 


DETACHED NOTES 425 


2. Construction of the Phrase.—This is a series of paren- 
theses enclosed in one another. As an example, we can bring 
out this peculiarity of Paul’s style by using special type: 


(a) Paulus, servus Jesu Christi, vocatus Apostolus, segre- 
gatus in Evangelium Del, 


(5) QUOD ANTE PROMISERAT PER PROPHETAS SUOS 
IN SCRIPTURIS SANCTIS DE FILIO SUO, 

(c) qui factus est ei ex semine David secundum 
carnem, qui praedestinatus est Filius Dei 
in virtute secundum spiritum sanctifica- 
tionis ex resurrectione mortuorum, 


(b) JESU CHRISTI DOMINI NOSTRI (better CHRISTO 
DOMINO NOSTRO) 
(d) per quem accepimus gratiam, et Apostolatum ad 


obediendum fidei in omnibus Gentibus pro 
nomine ejus, 


(e) in quibus estis et vos vocati Jesu Christi : 


(a) omnibus qui sunt Romae, dilectis Dei, vocatis sanctis. 
Gratia vobis, et pax a Deo Patre nostro, et Domino 
Jesu Christo. 


The principal proposition (a), printed in roman type (small 
pica), is cut in two by four incidental phrases superimposed, 
so to speak, one upon another. The first of these (0), in small 
capitals, which defines the Gospel, is itself cut in two by the 
second subclause (c), in heavy face, which defines the Son of 
God. The third clause (d), in brevier type, announces a new 
attribute of the Son, author of the apostolate of Paul to 
the Gentiles. Finally, the fourth (e), in italics, recalls the 
fact that the Romans belong to Paul’s sphere of ‘influence, 
and thus leads them back, by a long detour, to the principal 
idea which is now brought to an end without further difficulty. 
In the Vulgate two inaccuracies are to be noted: the words 
Jesu Christi Domini nostri ought to be in the ablative, as being 
in apposition with de Filo suo; moreover, nothing in the 
Greek corresponds to the word eé in the phrase qut factus 
est et. 


3. The Son of God according to the Flesh and according to the 
Spirit. 

TOU Viod TOV yevomevov éx oréeppatos Aaveld Kata capKa, 
Tov opirGevros viov Oeod ev Suvdwet kata rvedpa aywwovvyns 
ef dvarrtamews veKpov. 

For an exegesis of this text, however incomplete, there is 
no room here. Let us confine ourselves to erecting a few 
guide-posts. The subject of attribution of the whole phrase 
is ‘the Son of God”’ (epi rot viot avtov). This Son is defined 


426 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


or described by two attributes expressed by the participles 
(Tov yevopévov . . . Tov dpirbevros). The first clause presents 
no difficulties : “He who is the Son of God becomes of the 
race of David according to the flesh.” ‘Paul does not say that 
he becomes Son, for he is that already, but that he becomes 
of the race of David—namely, a descendant of David—and that 
from a special point of view, “according to the flesh,” that is 
to say, as man. 

In the second clause, almost all the words offer room for 
discussion. (A) Meaning of dpwévros. Let us observe in 
passing that we have here not zpoopicbévtos (Vulg. qui prae- 
destinatus est) but épirGevros, which signifies “ declared” or 
“established.” The exegetes are divided between these two 
explanations which really differ very little from each other. 
Indeed the act indicated by the participle épsévros does not 
concern the nature of the Son or his essential being, but his 
historical position ; thenceforth, “to declare” or “to estab- 
lish’ (that is to say, to cause to be recognized, to instal in 
his dignity) amounts to almost the same thing: (a) It is im- 
possible for Christ to be constituted Son of God by the 
resurrection, since he is so at the moment of his human birth 
(Tov viod rod yevouévov) and since he is sent to this earth in the 
quality of Son (Gal. iv, 4; Rom. viii, 3).—(b) We must com- 
pare our texts with Acts x, 42 (otrds ear 6 dpiopévos bd ror 
Geo kpir7s (évTwv Kal vexpov) and XV1l, 31 (Kpivey TH oikoupevny 

. ev avépi @ dpwev). Christ was a Judge by right and by 
power, but an authentic act of God declares and establishes 
him as Judge ; in the same way he was Son really and by full 
right, but he needed to be acknowledged as such.—(c) Every 
difficulty is removed, if, as some good commentators (Cornely, 
Weiss, etc.) think, év Suvdyer ought to be joined to viod Oeor, 
Then Christ is not declared or established mere Son of God, 
but “powerful Son of God,” the emphasis falling on the 
epithet. The position of the words favours this interpretation. 
—(B) Meaning of xara rvetpa éywotvns. Since these words 
make an antithesis to ward odpxa “ according to human 
nature,” we are inclined to understand by them the divine 
nature, and it is thus that many exegetes, even Protestants, 
explain them. The majority, however, refuse to see the 
divine nature in so unusual a designation ; for from the fact 
that the divine nature is spiritual and infinitely holy, it does 
not follow that it can be recognized in the expression mvetpa 
dywwortvys. So much the more as the flesh is not usually 
contrasted with the divine nature, but either with the Person 
or the effects of the Holy Spirit. It is, therefore, between 
these two very kindred meanings that the choice must be 
made. The Fathers, in general, prefer the former, and we 
know indeed that the Holy Spirit is closely related with the 
resurrection (Rom. viii, 11 ; 2 Cor. iv, 14). Nevertheless the 


DETACHED NOTES 427 


expressions ‘‘spirit of fear and adoption” (Rom. viii, 15), ‘‘spirit 
of faith ” (2 Cor. iv, 13), “spirit of wisdom” (Eph. i, 17), invite 
us to take rvevya aywotvys also, in an analogous sense, as the 
fulness of sanctity—that is, of graces and of spiritual gifts, with 
which the humanity of Christ is adorned.—(C) Meaning of 
€£ avaotdcews vexpov. Many exegetes explain this as if it read 
ex vexpov, by which they understand the resurrection of Jesus 
himself. But “the resurrection of the dead” is more than 
the resurrection of Jesus, although it includes the resurrection 
of Jesus, the first-fruit of the resurrected and the first-born 
among the dead. The meaning is simple: Jesus Christ, in 
consummating the redemptive work by the resurrection of the 
dead, of which he is the meritorious and exemplary cause, is 
solemnly installed by his Father in the office of Judge 
and the dignity of Son of God, to whom men owe homage 
(of Phil i111): 

According to the flesh—that is to say, according to carnal 
descent—Jesus Christ becomes son of David ; but according to 
the spinit of sanctification—that is to say, according to the 
substantial sanctification which is poured out upon _ his 
humanity from the fact of the hypostatic union, and accord- 
ing to the accidental sanctification which the fulness of graces 
and gifts of the Holy Spirit confers upon him, a sanctity 
which wins for him the distinction of being the first of those 
who rise again and the first-fruit of the resurrection from the 
dead, Jesus Christ is declared, established and enthroned as the 
Son of God. He is so by the fact of the resurrection from the 
dead, which he inaugurates in his own person and which 
shows his true nature, and he is so in a striking manner by 
means of a sovereign act of divine power, 1” virtute. 

We may compare, for the antithesis: mortificatus quidem 
carne, vivificatus autem spiritu (x Pet. iii, 18) or manifestatum 
est in carne, justificatum est autem in spiritu (1 Tim, ili, 16) ; 
and for the expression: crucifixus est ex infirmitate sed vivit ex 
virtute Det (2 Cor. xiii, 4). 


III—" Gop WHO HATH PURCHASED THE CHURCH WITH 
HIS Own BLOOD” 


(Acts xx, 28) 
IIpovéyere ... ravti tg Toupviv, ev Attendite ... universo gregt, 
@ tbyas Td Iveta 1d aytov €Gero in quo vos Spiritus sanc- 
em UT KOTOUS, tus posuit eprscopos, 


Towmaivew THY exkAnoiav Tov Ocov,  regere Ecclesiam Det, 
WV meperoujoato Sia Tov aipatos quam acquisivit sanguine 
tov idiov. suo. 
1. The True Reading —Besides some sporadic readings (rov 
Kupiov Ocov, rod Kupiov tot OQeot, tod Oeod Kat Kvpiov) the 
versions soundly attested are : 


428 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


(a) rov Geov-—-B minusc., Vulg. Pat. multi. 
(5) tov Kupiov—A C D E minusc., Copt. Arm. Pat. multi. 
(c) tov Xpurrov—Ethiop. Pesh. 

(d) tov Kupiov xat Geot—C* H L P minusc, plus roo. 


Evidently the text has been intentionally manipulated, as 
everything leads us to believe, for dogmatic reasons.— Reading 
(d), which is that of the immense majority of recent manu- 
scripts, is certainly false. In addition to the fact that it is 
not supported by any version or by a single one of the oldest 
manuscripts, or by any ecclesiastical author previous to the 
tenth century, it is clearly made up of a fusion of the readings 
(a) and (b).—The reading (c), insufficiently attested, has no 
chance of being an early one and is only a modification of (b). 
—The readings (a) and (6), if one counts up the testimonies in 
their favour, have about the same amount of support; but 
several considerations make the balance turn to the side of 
(2). Among the oldest Fathers we find the extraordinary 
expression aiva Qeov, sanguis Det; St Ignatius of Antioch, Ad 
Ephes.,i, x (ev aipare Geov, which the Latin version softens into 
Christi Det, and in which the interpolator substitutes Xpicrod 
for Ocov, cf. Ad Roman., vi, 3); Clement of Alexandria, Quis 
dives salvetur, 34 (aivare Oeod Iasdds, cf. Ibid. 37); Tertullian, 
Ad uxor., ii, 3. Although these authors do not cite our text, 
their testimony is indirectly in favour of the primitive reading 
Geov, for it is difficult to believe that they both adopted such 
an expression without scriptural authority. We know that 
the reading aiya Ocod always shocked many ecclesiastical 
writers, especially when the heretics had made a bad use of 
it. From this came the temptation to modify our text by 
substituting for rod Ocov either rod Kuplov or rod Kvpiov Kai 
Qeotv. And so the most recent critics, such as Westcott-Hort 
and Weiss, accept the reading rod Ocod as primitive and reject 
as arbitrary the supposition that the word viod has disappeared 
after tov idtov, without leaving any traces of having been there. 
However, as the sense scandalizes them, Weiss proposes to 
translate dca Tov aiparos tov tSiov “by the blood of his own,” 
(Son understood), and Hort suggests “ by the blood which is 
his,” as being that of his Son. These fantasies need no 
refutation, 


2. The Meaning.—The only admissible translation is: 
Govern ‘the Church of God which he has purchased with 
his own blood.” In order to explain what is a little shocking 
in this phrase, we must bear in mind that St Paul borrows at 
the start the language of the Old Testament where Israel is 
“the Church of God” and “the people that he has pur- 
chased.” In writing these words, which he takes in a figura- 
tive sense, it may be that Paul does not yet have Christ 


DETACHED NOTES 429 


distinctly in mind; but, in the rest of the discourse, he 
identifies Christ with Jehovah, as he often does. 


IV—Tue HyMn To CHRIST TRIUMPHANT 
(1 Tim. iii, 16) 


Os [or Ocds] epavepdby ev capxit, Quod manifestatum est in carne. 


eduxarwOn ev rrvevtpare, Justificatum est in spiritu, 
OpOn ayyérass, apparuit angelis, 
€xnpvxOn ev eOverwy, praedicatum est Gentibus, 
érirtevOn ev KOT BY, creditum est in mundo, 
aveAnpOn ev So€p. assumptum est in gloria. 


1. The True Reading—Should we read 6s or Ocos? The 
variant reading, so important for the meaning, depends on a 
very little thing ; for in the uncial writing OEOC, abbreviated 
into OC, is scarcely distinguishable from OC. 

(A) The reading Océs is that of the immense majority of 
manuscripts, of more than 200 cursive, and of the three uncials 
KLP. The reading ds has in its favour only the cursives 17, 
73, 181, and, among the uncials, the Sinazticus, the twin 
texts F and G, and perhaps the first hand of C. The 
Alexandrinus is doubtful, and the Vaticanus has not this 
passage at all. Codex D reads, like the Vulgate, 6 (quod). 

(B) On the contrary, all the ancient versions presuppose 
the relative, either in the masculine or neuter; and the Latin 
Fathers naturally follow the reading of the Latin version ; 
but the Greek Fathers are divided. St Chrysostom, St Gregory 
of Nyssa, Didymus, Theodoret and others later clearly sup- 
port Oeds. St Epiphanius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and 
St Cyril of Alexandria are for és. To the first are sometimes 
added St Ignatius (Ad Ephes., xix, 3: Gcod avOpwrivus pavepov- 
pévov) and St Hippolytus (Ad. Noet.: Oeds év capare épavepwOn); 
but, however precious these texts are for the theologian, to 
whom they show what was thought about the incarnate Word 
in the second century, it is not certain that these are quota- 
tions from St Paul—they lack the characteristic expression 
év capxi—and we may ask whether they have not rather 
influenced the reading Oeds éfavepw6n of the more recent 
manuscripts and contributed thus to introduce a dogmatic 
alteration into the Epistle unconsciously. 

(C) The critics are unanimous for the reading os epavepwOn, 
Thus Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Westcott- 
Hort, Weiss, and von Soden. We must concede that they are 
right, not by virtue of the very untrustworthy principle : 
Lectio magis ardua praestat, but because the versions, some of 
which are much earlier than our oldest manuscripts, take it 
for granted, and because the testimony of the Fathers is 


undecided. 


430 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


2. The Meaning—The Apostle has just mentioned the 
mystery of godliness. He now passes without transition to the 
description of that mystery, identical in reality with Christ 
the redeemer, to whom the masculine relative (és) refers for 
the meaning—unless we prefer to explain the lack of gram- 
matical harmony by an abrupt quotation. In any case we 
must not look in this phrase for a complete and independent 
proposition the first part of which would be the protasis and 
the other five the apodosis, or the first three the protasis and 
the last three the apodosis (Seeberg). It matters little for the 
sense whether the six parts are parallel to one another or 
whether it is necessary to divide them, either into two triplets 
or into three pairs (Weiss). 

(a) Christ was made manifest in the flesh at the moment ot 
his earthly birth. This recalls the Verbum caro factum est of 
St John. St Peter also uses for Christ the word ¢avepotc bat 
(I Pet. i, 20), which St Paul applies elsewhere to the Mystery 
(Rom. xvi, 26; Col. i, 26; iv, 4). 

(0) He was justified in the spirit (or in the Spirit). The 
glorious resurrection justifies the claim which Jesus made to 
be the Messiah and the Son of God (cf. Rom. i, 4). The 
spirit, as opposed to the flesh, is here not the divine nature, 
but either the Holy Spirit as agent of the resurrection 
(Rom. viii, 11), or the spirit of sanctification to which Jesus 
owes his resurrection and the fact that he became thus the 
first-fruits of the glorious resurrection. ; 

(c) He appeared to the angels, not in any mere casual way, 
for the fact would thus have no significance, but as a con- 
queror having thenceforth a special right to the homage 
and adoration of the heavenly spirits (Phil. ii, 10, 11; ef. 
Coliyet5). 

(2) He was preached among the nations ; while he triumphed 
in heaven, his kingdom assumed ever-increasing proportions 
on earth. 

(¢) He was believed on in the world ; the world means here, 
as usual in St Paul, the human race. 

(f) He was taken up in glory, at the moment of his glorious 
ascension. The verb aveAjPOn is employed in the same sense 
by St Luke (Acts i, 2, 22), and the addition of év d0£n does not 
allow us to understand it differently. It is objected that this 
explanation disturbs the chronological order, but it has not 
been proved that the author wishes to confine himself to a 
strict order of events, and here he had a special reason for 
ending his enumeration with Christ’s striking triumph. 


NOTE S—TRINITARIAN TEXTS 


I—List oF TExtTs 


The passages in which the three divine Persons are named 
together are numerous: Forty could be cited, including the 
Epistle to the Hebrews; but some belonging to the same 
context ought not to be counted separately ; and in other 
cases the simultaneous mention of the three Persons either is 
only apparent or purely accidental. We give twenty-six of 
them, arranged in two categories. 


1. TEXTS ALREADY STUDIED IN THIS WORK 


(a) 1 Cor, ii, 10, 12, Vol. II, p. 143. (f) Gal. iv, 5, 6, Vol. II, p. 134. 
(Oyet- Cormnt tryVolvlspo17 7. (g) Rom. viii, 9, 11, Vol. II, p. 145. 


(cet Cor; xii, 4,0, Vololl;. p. 133: (h) Rom. viii, 14,17, Vol. II, p. 135. 
(ad) 2 Cor. i, 21, 22, Vol. II, p. 136. (t) Rom. xv, 15, 16, Vol. II, p. 137. 
(e) 2 Cor. xiii, 13, Vol. II, p. 132. (7) Eph. 1, 13, 14, Vol. HI, pp. 85-86 


(k) Titus iii, 4, 6, Vol. II, pp. 135-136. 


2. TEXTS TO BE EXAMINED HEREAFTER 


(/) 1 Thess. v, 18, Io. (q) Rom. vy, 1-5. (v) Eph. ii, 18. 

(m) 2 Thess. ii, 13, 14. (r) Rom. xiv, 17, 18. (w) Eph. ii, 22. 

(n) 1 Cor. vi, 15, 20. (s) Rom. xv, 30. («) Eph. iii, 14, 17. 
(0) 1 Cor. xii, 3. (f) Gal. iii, 11, 14. (y) Eph, iv, 4, 6. 
(~) 2 Cor. iii, 3. (uw) Col. i, 6, 8. (z) Eph. v, 18, 20, 


Many will perhaps find this list tooshort. They will search 
it in vain for texts to which they are accustomed to give a 
Trinitarian interpretation—for example, Rom. xi, 36 : Quoniam 
ex ipso, et per tpsum et in tpso sunt omnia ; ipsi gloria in 
saecula ;: but this speaks of God without distinction of Persons. 
St Augustine and the Latin commentators who understand by 
ex tpso the Father, by per tpsum the Son, and 1 tpso the Holy 
Spirit, have been led into error by the Latin version. In the 
Greek the third term ets avrdv hardly suits this application.— 
The passage in Acts xx, 28 (Attendite vobis et universo gregi, in 
quo vos Spiritus sanctus posuit episcopos regere Ecclesiam Dei 
quam acquisiuit sanguine suo) contains in appearance only the 
mention of the three Persons ; for God, identified with Christ, 
cannot be God the Father. See Note R. 


II—CRITICISM OF SEVERAL TEXTS 


(1) 1 Thess. v, 18-19.—In omnibus gratias agite; haec est enim 
voluntas Dei in Christo Jesu im omnibus volts. Spiritum 
nolite extinguere. Theassociation of the three Persons appears 
fortuitous, since the two phrases are not connected. It is not 
even certain that Spiritus denotes the Holy Spirit, for it is 

431 


432 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


paralleled with prophecy, nor isit very clear how anyone could 
quench the Spirit, unless in the charismata of which he is the 
author. 

(m) 2 Thess. ii, 13, 14.—Nos autem debemus gratias agere 
Deo semper pro vobis, fratres dilecti a Deo, quod elegerit vos 
Deus primitias in salutem in sanctificatione Spiritus et in fide 
veritatis : in qua et vocavit per Evangelium nostrum 1m acquist- 
tionem gloriae Domini nostri Jesu Christi. If we suppose that 
Spiritus signifies the Holy Spirit, the three divine Persons are 
distinguished according to their sphere of appropriation and 
represented as co-operating in our salvation: the Father, as 
author of the election and call; the Holy Spirit, as the principle 
of sanctification ; Jesus Christ, as the meritorious or exemplary 
cause of eternal life (according as wepiroinors is taken in the 
active or the passive sense). The doubt in regard tothe word 
Spiritus is ditficult to remove, év éyacpu@ mvevparos being able 
to signify the sanctification (active) which the Holy Spirit 
operates in us, or the sanctification (passive) of our spirit or 
our supernatural being. In the latter case, the reference to 
the Holy Spirit would be only indirect. The Vulgate writes 
spiritus without a capital. 

(n) x Cor. vi, 15, 20.—Our bodies are the members of 
Christ (verse 15) and the temple of the Holy Ghost (verse 19) ; 
to respect one’s body is to honour God (verse 20) ; to be joined 
to the Lord is to be one and the same sprit with him (verse 17). 
—Naturally weseem hereto recognize threeagents co-operating 
in our sanctification, whose action is so interwoven as to 
appear identical; but the Greek dofacare 37) Tov Oedy ev TH 
cépatt tuav does not express clearly the indwelling of the 
Father, and the Latin et portate is a gloss. 

(0) 1 Cor. xii, 3.—Nemo in Spiritu Deiloquens dicit anathema 
Jesu. Et nemo potest dicere Dominus Jesus, mst im Spiritu 
sancto. (No one speaking when moved by the Spirit of God 
says: Anathema be to Jesus |! and no one can say: Jesus is the 
Lord, unless by the Holy Spirit.)}—From the point of view 
which concerns us here, there is hardly anything to be noted 
in this text except the simultaneous mention of the three 
Persons, the Spirit of God being the Spirit of the Father. 

(p) 2 Cor. iii, 3—Epztstola estis Christi, ministrata a nobis et 
scripta non atramento, sed Spiritu Dei vivi. Is this the Holy 
Spirit? The Vulgate writes spiritu. ; 

(q) Rom. v, 1-5.—It is by Jesus Christ that we are reconciled 
with God the Father (v. 1), and it is by the Holy Spirit that the 
love of God is spread abroad in our hearts. (v. 5) There are 
here two personal contrasts of Christ and the Spirit with God 
the Father, but the three Persons are not placed simultaneously 
in connection with one another. 

(r) Rom. xiv, 17,18.—Non est enim regnum Dei esca et potus, 
sed justitia et pax et gaudium in Spiritu sancto: qui enim im 


DETACHED NOTES 433 


hoc servit Christo placet Deo. We find here the names of the 
three Persons with an intimate relation between them, but 
no personal contrast. 

(s) Rom. xv, 30.—Obsecro vos per Dominum nostrum Jesum 
Christum, et per caritatem sancti Spiritus, ut adjuvetis me in 
orattontbus vestris pro me ad Deum. Among the texts of 
a secondary order, this is one of the best. The Greek, it is 
true, has only rov rvetuaros, but it can hardly be doubted that 
it is the Holy Spirit (on account of the parallelism with the 
first clause), and the distinction of the three Persons is clearly 
marked. 

(¢) Gal. iii, 11, 14.—The allusion to the three Persons is too 
disconnected. Moreover, if pollicitatio Spiritus is the prom- 
ised Holy Spirit, we ask whether in nemo gustificatur apud 
Deum God signifies the Father or God without distinction of 
Persons. 

(4) Col. i, 6-8.—The bond between God, from whom grace 
is derived (v. 6), Christ Jesus, of whom Paul is the minister 
(v. 7), and the sPirit, which is perhaps not the Holy Spirit 
(v. 8: dilectionem vestram in spiritu), is too weak to furnish 
a solid argument in favour of the Trinity. 

(v) Eph. ii, 18.—Per ipsum [Christum] habemus accessum 
ambo im uno Spiritu ad Patrem. The mention of the three 
divine Persons is explicit, supposing that spiritus designates 
the Holy Spirit; it would be only indirect, if spiritus desig- 
nated a gift or an effect of the Holy Spirit. Catholic exegesis 
in general understands by wvevua the Holy Spirit (St Chrysos- 
tom, St Thomas, Estius, Bisping, etc.). Several Protestants 
are of the same opinion (Meyer, Westcott, Abbott, etc.). Yet 
Theodoret, St Jerome, and others think differently. Cornelius 
a Lapide leaves it to the choice of the reader. 

(w) Eph. ii, 22.—In guo [Domino] et vos coaedificamini in 
habitaculum Dei in Spiritu. It is the same question here as 
above. The Latins who read in their text in Spiritu sancto 
(like St Thomas, Estius, etc.) understood by it the Holy Spirit. 
Chrysostom and his school regard év rvevpari as equivalent to 
an adjective (tvevwatixds=a spiritual temple). Among the 
Protestant exegetes, several consider the mention of the Holy 
Spirit as evident: so Abbott, Moule, etc. German commen- 
tators are more inclined to treat év mvetpare as a common 
noun. 

(x) Eph. iii, 14-17.—Although Domini nostri J.C. is wanting 
in the original, the personal contrast is very clear : Paul asks 
the Father to send his Spirit, that Christ may dwell in our 
hearts. 

(y) Eph. iv, 4-6.—Unum corpus et unus Spiritus... . Unus 
Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma. Unus Deus et Pater 
omnium, qui est super omnes, et per omnia et in omnibus nobis. 


This text recalls 1 Cor. xii, 4-6, where the order of the divine 
Il. 28 


434 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Persons is the same: the Spirit, the Lord, and God. It 
seems indeed that here again Spiritus denotes the Holy 
Spirit, soul of the mystical body; and we can understand 
also by the preceding verse (sollicit: servare unitatem Spiritus 
wm vinculo pacts) the union produced by the Holy Spirit. Yet 
Chrysostom thinks that zvevua can signify here feeling or 
- good will” (xpoOupia), 

(z) Eph. v, 18-20.—Implemini Spiritu sancio . . . gratias 
agentes semper pro omnibus, in nomine Domini nosin Jesu 
Christi Deo e¢ Patri. The question is always to know whether 
there is a direct reference to the Holy Spirit. In Latin, thanks 
to the addition of the adjective sancto, the thing is not doubt- 
ful; but the Greek has only zAnpotobe év rvevuarr, and these 
words form a counterpart to pi peOioxerGe oivw. If the 
Holy Spirit himself is designated, we have here the formula 
of the Christian prayer which is addressed to the Father, by 
the Son (or 1m the name of the Son), in the Holy Spirit. 


NOTE T—DOMINUS AUTEM SPIRITUS EST 


(2 Cor. iii, 17) 
I—THE PRESENT PosITION 


One of the most delicate and subtle problems of Pauline 
exegesis is, no doubt, to ascertain when the word “ spirit” 
should be written with an initial capital. Let someone make 
a trial of this in chapter viii of the Epistle to the Romans, in 
which the word recurs seventeen times in the first sixteen 
verses, and where the orthographical variations of the Vulgate 
are not always easy to justify. But the most pertinent exam- 
ple is still our text: Dominus autem spiritus (or Spiritus) est. 
Exegetes here differ as widely as possible. A concise presen- 
tation of the position is found in L. Krummel (Studien und 
Knittken, vol. xxxii, 1859, pp. 39-100), and a conscientious, 
systematic, and well reasoned out account of it in a learned 
monograph by P. Holzmeister (Dominus autem Spiritus est, 
Innsbruck, 1908). To the old interpretations many others 
have been added, and we feel, when running through them, 
that we are wandering haphazard in an inextricable labyrinth. 
More recently P. Nisius (Zeitschrift f. kath. Theol., vol. xl, 
pp- 617-676) has proposed a new explanation, which perhaps 
will satisfy no one; because, as the Biblische Zettschrift 
(vol. xiv, 1917, p. 376) remarks, the author “deals much with 
dogmatic and speculative considerations”; which, in exegesis, 
is not a good method. An evident result of this mixture is 
that no explanation makes an impression on the Catholic 
exegete, who remains thus free to choose as he likes. If the 
theologians of our day rarely appeal to this text to prove the 
divinity of the Holy Spirit, they must have, good reasons for 
not doing so. When a text is generally abandoned by theo- 
logians, as are to-day x John v, 7 for the Trinity, and 2 Cor. 
ili, 17 for the divinity of the Holy Spirit, this abandonment is 
symptomatic. Its cause must be sought either in a serious 
doubt concerning its authenticity or in an insurmountable 
difficulty in its exegesis. 

To proceed in an orderly manner, we will examine succes- 
sively: (£) What is the subject of the phrase ; (2) the meaning 
of 6 Kupios ; (3) the meaning of 73 mvevua; (4) the sense of the 
entire clause. 


II—TuHE SUBJECT OF THE PHRASE Is 6 Kvpios, not 73 rvedpa 


1. In the phrase 6 Kipus 73 rreiua eorwy, for the inversion 
to be admissible, Kvpsos must not have the definite article if 
we are to regard it asa predicate, as in the passage in St John 

435 


436 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


(iv, 24): mvevpa 6 Ocds. The text of St Paul ts entirely different 
and nothing in it justifies the inversion. 

Contemporary interpreters are unanimous on this point, and 
perhaps now there is no dissentient voice; but it was not 
always so. Walafrid Strabo, the author of the usual Gloss, 
says: Ordo verborum est: Spiritus sanctus est Dominus (or 
rather dominus.) He was followed by a great number of 
Latin commentators, such as Lanfranc, Haymo of Halberstadt, 
Hervé, Nicolas of Lyra, Dionysius the Carthusian. Peter 
Lombard and St Thomas gave his explanation the first place. 
For these authors and for those who share their views, domt- 
nus is not a proper but an appellative noun, as appears clearly 
in the paraphrase of Strabo (dominus—i.e., potest operars quod 
vult), or in that of St Thomas (dominus—t.e., operatur ex proprio 
libertatis arbitrio). The absence of an article in Latin made 
the confusion possible. 


2. This entirely differentiates their intrepretation from the exegesis 
of St John Chrysostom and the other Greek Fathers. They also 
make 7d IIvejya the subject of the phrase, understanding 
thereby the Person of the Holy Spirit ; but no subtlety can 
obscure their thought, which is clearness itself. Their reason- 
ing amounts to this: Moses formerly addressed the Lord 
(that is to say, God); the Christian addresses the Spirit. 
Now the Spirit also is himself the Lord (that is to say, God). 
Therefore to address the Spirit is to address God. They 
prove the minor proposition in two ways: 

(a) In our text it is not Christ who is called the Spirit, it is 
the Spirit who is called Lord; thus Chrysostom (LXI, 448: 
kat tovto [Iveta] Kvpros exriv) ; Theodoret (LXXXII, 397: 
Ajrov as Td ravdytov IIvetpa Kipcov rpoonydpevoe) ; Theodore 
of Mopsuestia (LXVI, 896 : AjAov dre pry rv Kipiov rvevpa deyet, 
GAAG 7d Iveta Kipsov). St Basil, enumerating the passages 
in which the Spirit is called Lord, adds our text to them 
(XXXII, 163-166). So too St Athanasius in De Trin. et Spir.S., 
for a long time ascribed to Vigilius of Tapsus (XXVI, 545). 
Oecumenius well sums up the usual exegesis of the Greeks 
when he says (CXVIII, 955: My doBov, cat mpos 7d IIvevpa 
érustpépov mpds Kipiov erurtpépes. Kupsos yap 7d Ivetpo kal 
dpomporktyntov Kat opoovorov Ilarpi cai Yi. 

(b) The following verse says that, in beholding the glory of 
the Lord, we are transformed from glory to glory, xa0umep ard 
xuptov mvevpatos. But the Greek is grammatically ambiguous 
and can be translated: as by the Lord the Spirit (dd Ivevpa- 
ros Kvpiov). It is thus the Greek Fathers generally under- 
stand it. They conclude from it again that the Holy Spirit is 
called Lord (xvpioAoyeirat), that is to say God; for they suppose 
the synonymy between God and Lord to be established. 

We cannot fail to notice that the Greek Fathers always 


DETACHED NOTES 437 


omit the article of 6 Kvpuos, so keenly do they feel that such a 
statement as 7d [Iveta éorwy 6 Kvpios would be incorrect or at 
least very singular. What made them accept such an un- 
natural textual disturbance is the double conviction that 7d 
IIvetya is here a proper noun and that é Kvpwos denotes God 
and not Christ. 


III—'O Kiupios siGNirres CHRIST 


Here is another point on which modern exegetes are almost 
unanimously agreed. Indeed, an attentive study of the con- 
text and the Pauline vocabulary hardly allow any other view. 
Suffice it to indicate briefly the three principal reasons for it. 


I. St Paul, speaking for himself—that is to say, apart from 
quotations from the Old T estament—always understands by 
Kiptos (with or without the article) the Son of God and never 
God himself. This fact is generally recognized, though a 
few admit some rare exceptions. Thus Cremer (Biblisch-theol. 
Worterbuch’, p. 619) claims that xvpios without an article is used 
exceptionally as a divine name in 2 Cor. vill, 21; Eph. v, 8; 
I Thess. iv, 6, and with the article in 1 Cor. Vee lO ne Xs.0, 20% 
Eph. v, 17, 19; 2 Thess. iii, 5; but he hastens to add‘that in 
all these examples, except 1 Cor. x, 26, Kvpuos or 6 Kvpios may 
quite well mean Christ. The remark is a very wise one, for 
no reason is apparent in the cases cited for divertin g the word 
Kvpwos (or 6 Kivpuos) from its usual meaning. As for the one 
exception asserted by Cremer (1 Cor. x, 26: te Kvpuov yap 
y7 kat 7d wArjpwpa atris), that is a verbal quotation from the 
Septuagint, Ps. xxiii, 1, and it is singular that the learned 
lexicographer has not perceived it. Pauline usuage does not, 
therefore, allow a single exception (at least no certain one), 
and the exegetes have no right to suppose without good proof 
that the Apostle gives to Kvpios in 2 Cor. ili, I7 a meaning 
contrary to his whole customary usage. Here, as everywhere 
else, 6 Kvpios must signify Christ. Whoever maintains the 
contrary must proveit. ~ 


2. hts meaning is further imposed by the preceding verse. 
No one disputes the fact that the meaning of Kvpos in 
verse 16 ought to be the same as that of 6 Kiépuos in verse 1 
otherwise, there would be a manifest lack of coherence in the 
discourse and a fallacy in the reasoning. Now the Lord in 
verse 16 can only be Christ : ‘Hvixa 8 éav exiatpéevy mpods Kipior, 
mepratpeitar TO kaAvupa. In order to remove the veil, symbol 
of blindness and servitude, it is sufficient to turn to the Lord 
and be converted to him—the figurative meaning of eT LOT pe~ 
deo Gac is not without an allusion to the proper sense of the 
word, applicable only to Moses—but it is in Christ alone that 


438 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


the veil is taken away (verse 14: ote ev Xpurry katapyeirac) ; it 
is therefore to him that it is necessary to go to find light and 
liberty. Does anyone imagine that St Paul places the charac- 
teristic difference between the Jews and the Jewish Christians 
in the fact that the latter have become converted to God? 
As a Jew, Paul is conscious of having always served God 
(Acts xxiii, 1; 2 Tim. i, 3), but that which has made him 
a Christian is faith in Christ (Gal. i, 15 ; Phil. iti, 8). 


3. The following verse also enforces the equation: ‘‘ The Lord 
—Christ.” Tf the Lord means God, it can only be God with- 
out distinction of Persons, for that is the only intelligible 
meaning of the equation: The Lord (God) is the (Holy) 
Spirit; but then the “implied sense ” of the word “ Lord” 
will change in-the following phrase, since, if the Spirit is the 
Person of the Holy Spirit, the Lord (God) can be only the 
Father or the Son. On the contrary, if we understand that 
the Lord means Christ, the same meaning is maintained to 
the end, and we can speak without ambiguity of the “spirit of 
the Lord” and of the “ Lord [who is] spirit.” 


[V—T3 wvetpa IS NOT THE PERSON OF THE 
Hoty SPIRIT 


Even if 6 Kipuos should signify God and not Christ, it is not 
clear how 7d IIvedpa could denote the Person of the Holy 
Spirit. Indeed, in the proposition: “ God is the Holy Spirit,” 
either God is God the Father, and the proposition is manifestly 
false, or else God is the divine nature without distinction of 
Persons; and the proposition is so difficult to justify, that all 
the skill of the exegetes is insufficient to explain it. We can 
very well say: The Holy Spirit is God, because God, though 
he is one, subsists in three Persons ; but we cannot, on the 
contrary, say: God is the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit 
does not exhaust all the fulness of the divine essence. 
Chrysostom and his school instinctively felt this, and that is 
why they made 78 IIvetpa the subject of the phrase. Admit- 
ting that 6 Kipios is a divine name and, in fact, a synonym of 
God, they obtained in that way a proposition of irreproach- 
able orthodoxy: The Holy Spirit is the Lord—that is to say, 
God. But if, with all the moderns, we reject as inadmissible 
the transposition of subject and attribute, we cannot intelligibly 
explain how the Lord can be the Holy Spirit. 

If, on the contrary, as we have proved, 6 Kupwos signifies 
Christ, 7d mvedpa cannot be the Person of the Holy Spirit. 
Indeed, it is evident that one divine Person cannot be identi- 
fied with another, and that such an equation as “ the Father is 
the Son,” or “the Son is the Holy Spirit,’ is absolutely 
refuted by the very notion of Person. In order to defend it, 


DETACHED NOTES 439 


it would be necessary to maintain, with contemporary rational- 
ists, either that the Holy Spirit is not a personal being, or 
that neither Christ nor the Spirit is a Person, but that they 
are merely influences, forces, spiritual atmospheres. For these 
systems of thought see Holzmeister, of. cit., pp. 18-27. 
Having elsewhere proved that Christ and the Holy Spirit 
are distinct Persons, we shall not pause to consider this 
explanation. 


V—Td veda IS THE SPIRIT AS OPPOSED TO 
THE LETTER 


If the spirit is not the Holy Spirit, can it be a “spiritual 
substance” as in the phrase “God is spirit” (John iv, 24), 
which has a false air of resemblance to ours? Several 
exegetes have thought so, such as Eusebius of Caesarea (De 
eccles. theol., iii, 5; XXIV, 1012, etc.), Didymus the Blind 
(De Spir. S.. 54 and 58, XXXIX, 1079 and 1081), Walafrid 
Strabo in the common Gloss (CXIV, 555), and after him a 
goodly number of scholastics. But this explanation cannot 
be granted ; for rvevya could not then be in any way accom- 
panied by the definite article. All modern exegetes, Protestant 
and Catholic, are agreed on this point. 

The meaning is clearly suggested by the context which 
must be resumed from a rather remote previous point. Let 
us not forget that the first three chapters are an apology. 
Paul, accused of duplicity, disloyalty and shameful conceal- 
ments, repudiates these reproaches indignantly and with an 
insistence for which he feels obliged to apologize. He needs 
no letters of recommendation, he declares; the Corinthians 
whom he has converted are themselves his letter of recom- 
mendation, written not with ink but with the spirit of the 
living God (iii, 3). Thenceforth the antithesis “letter” and 
‘‘spirit” is the keynote of his defence. His words and acts 
are stamped with an apostolic liberty and frankness (zezoi- 
Onais, wappnoia, éAXevepia) in consideration of the ministry 
which he fills: 


It is not the ministry of the old covenant, but that of the new (iii, 6). 

It is not the ministry of the letter, but that of the spirit (iii, 6 and iii, 8). 
It is not a ministry of death, but one of life (iii, 7). 

It is not a ministry of condemnation, but one of justice (iii, 9). 


He contrasts the Gospel with the old covenant considered 
in itself, independently of the new and actually in conflict 
with the new. From this point of view, the Mosaic Law isa 
decrepit institution, a dead letter, which has actually pro- 
duced death and condemnation; the Gospel is, however, 
a spiritual principle, quickening and justifying ; for ‘the letter 
killeth,” if it be left alone, isolated from the spirit; but the 


440 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


spirit quickeneth (iii, 6); the new dispensation, which bears a 
relation to the old, such as the spirit bears to the letter, gives 
life and supernatural justice. Here the purest Pauline 
doctrine is easily recognized. 

Nevertheless, the ministration of the old covenant, in spite 
of its imperfection, was so glorious that its brilliancy was 
depicted on the face of Moses and obliged him to cover it 
with a veil. How much more glorious will be the ministra- 
tion of the new covenant! (iii, 7-11). But the Apostles never- 
theless show their faces unveiled; they do not borrow Moses’ 
veil, which is a symbol of fear and blindness (ili, 12, 13); they 
leave it to the unbelieving Jews, who read the /etier of the Law 
without grasping its spirit (iii, 14, 15). This veil Christ alone 
makes void (iii, 14), and when the Jews turn to the Lord and 
are converted to him, they will perceive this veil fall from 
their eyes (iii, 16). ‘ Now the Lord is the spirit” (iii, 17)— 
that is to say, the spiritual and prophetic sense hidden under 
the letter. ‘Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” 
freedom exempt from cowardice and concealment. “ But we 
all,” concludes the Apostle, “ beholding with open face the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed from glory to glory (and 
from brightness to brightness) into the same image, as by the 
Lord the spirit.” 

We have thus the advantage of keeping the antithesis 
‘letter and spirit” in its natural and usual meaning (Rom. 
ii, 28, 29: Non enim qui im mantfesto Judaeus est; neque quae 
in mantfesto, in carne, est circumcisio ; sed gut in abscondtto 
Judaeus est ; et circumcisio cordis in spiritu, non littera). The 
Christian is circumcised not literally but spiritually; not 
according to the letter of the Mosaic Law, but according to 
the spirit—-that is to say, according to the typical and prophetic 
meaning of this law.—So also Rom. vii, 6: Nunc autem soluts 
sumus a lege mortis (mortis is gloss) im qua detinebamur, sta ut 
serviamus in novitate spiritus et non in vetustate litterae.—The 
Vulgate is right, in both cases, to write spiritus without an 
initial capital, for here there is no question of the Person of 
the Holy Spirit, although we can very easily pass from the 
activity of the Holy Spirit to his Person. Grammatically, the 
last words dd Kvplov rvetparos can be translated in four 
ways: 

(a) By the Lord of the spirit (xv. depending on xvp.). 

(b) By the Spirit of the Lord (xp. depending on 7v. in- 

versely). 

(c) By the Spirit (who is) Lord (apposition inversely). 

(d) By the Lord (who is) the spirit (natural apposition). 

But (a) does not give a satisfying or even an intelligible 


sense. We can say the “Spirit of the Lord,” but what is 
“the Lord of the Spirit”? (6) and (c) present an inversion 


DETACHED NOTES 441 


which nothing allows us to assume or to accept, for this would 
be to go in search of ambiguity for its own sake. Therefore, 
the last of the above translations becomes imperative ; and it 
does so irresistibly, if we reach the equation: “The Lord is 
Christ,’ as almost all contemporary exegetes do. 

Our interpretation is not new. Origen and St Thomas had 
already proposed it. In spite of some differences of detail, 
Origen maintains constantly: (a) That the Lord is Christ ; 
(5) that the spirit is not the third Person of the Trinity ; 
(c) that the spirit is the contrary of the letter. (Contra Celsum, 
vi, 70; In. Matt., x, 14; In Joan., xiii, 53; In Exod. hom., 
xili, 4.)—St Thomas has two explanations: the first is that of 
the usual Gloss, which it was not advisable to omit, however 
unsatisfactory it might be; the second is the following : Alio 
modo, ut per Dominum intelligatur Christus ; id est spiritus 
potestatis, et ideo, ubi est spiritus Domini, id est lex Christi 
spiritualiter intellecta, non scripta litteris, sed per fidem cordibus 
wmpressa, bi est libertas ab omni impedimento velaminis.—Many 
other commentators have remarked that the antithesis lettey 
and spirit dominates this entire chapter. To cite only the 
most recent ones: Lebreton, Origines du dogme de la trinité*, 
1917, note F, p.569, and Lemonnyer, Epitres de S Paul, 1906, 
vol. i, p. 197: ‘‘ We ask whether this verse (iii, 17) does not 
refer to iti, 16 [non littera sed Spiritu], and whether the 
phrase: The Lord is the Spirit, is not implicitly parallel to 
this other: Moses is the Law.” Very good; but I should 
be much more affirmative. 

If the free questions of exegesis, like this one, are not 
settled by an appeal to authority, it is always a consolation 
for an exegete to find himself in good company. 


NOTE U—PATRISTIC THEORIES OF REDEMPTION 


Most of the texts are collected in the work of the Abbe J. 
Rivitre (Le dogme de la Rédemption, essat d étude historique, 
Paris, 1905), to which we refer the reader. Leaving aside the 
heterodox theory of subjective redemption, we shall confine 
ourselves to stating succinctly the three principal views of the 
Fathers: the theory of ransom, the theory of substitution, and 
the theory of solidarity. 


I—TuHE THEORY OF REDEMPTION AND THE 
RIGHTS OF THE DEVIL 


1. Reprehensible Patristic Texts——When the Fathers are 
content to say that sin makes us slaves and even slaves of the 
devil, that Jesus Christ is our ransom, that he purchases us by 
his blood, there is nothing to object to, since their language 
is Scriptural. But some of them affirm or insinuate that the 
devil had claims to us, that compensation was due to him, that 
he would not have released us without it—in fact, that a 
ransom was paid him. Here are the incriminated passages : 

(A) Origen, among other irreproachable explanations, insists 
a little too much on the ideas of ransom and redemption, 
which he seems to take in their literal sense. Cf. In Roman., 
iii, 7 (XIV, 945) ; In Joan., i, 39 and vi, 35 (XIV, 92 and 292). 
He likes to describe sin under the figure of a contract, by 
virtue of which we sell ourselves to the devil. Cf In Exod. 
hom., vi, 9 (XII, 338); In Jerem. hom., xv, 5 (XIII, 433); Lu 
Roman., vy, 3 (XIV, 1026) ; In Luke hom., xxii (XIII, 1862). 
Once he even asks whether the ransom has not been paid to 
Satan, Im Maitt., xvi, 8 (XII, 1397): Tivs 8& ESwxe THY pox7V 
aitov Airpov dvti TéAAWY ; Ov yap dH tO Oe@* pare obv TO TovNPy ; 
obtos Yap éxparet jpov éws S00y 76 imép Hpav attm AvTpov 7 TOV 
Inoov Yuyn dmarnBevte os Suvapéevp adris xupievoa, Cf. In 
Romay,, ii, 13 (XIV, 145). 

(B) If Origen hesitates, St Gregory of Nyssa is categorical : 
Oratio catech. magna, 22-24 (XLV, 60-66). The contract of sale 
concluded with the devil is valid ; we really belong to him ; 
God could doubtless liberate us forcibly from our master, but 
he prefers to observe equity and justice with him; therefore 
a ransom is paid him : "Eéec pn Tov Tupavvixoy GAAG Tov Stkatov 
tporov erivonOjvar TNS dvaxAjoews * obros S€ eoTi Tes TY. em LK pa~ 
rovvTs rojracba Tav Grep av ’GeAou Avrpov (ibid. 23, XLV, 61). 

(C) St Ambrose is also fond of describing the bargain 
which delivers us over to Satan. The devil buys us at 
auction. Cf, De Jacob, I, iii, 10 (XIV, 632); In Psalm, Xxxvi, 
No. 46 (XV, 1036); In Luke, vii, Nos. 114-117 and x, No. 66. 

442 


DETACHED NOTES 443 


(XV, 1727-8 and 1913). From that to saying that the devil 
had to be indemnified was only a step. St Ambrose took this 
step once at least: Pretium nostrae liberationis erat sanguts 
Domini Jesu, quod necessario solvendum erat et cur peccatis 
venditi eramus (Epist., |xxii, 8-g [XVI, 1299-1300]). Cf. Epzst., 
xli, 7-8 (XVI, 1162-3). 

(D) St Jerome has something like it: Nec ante veniam 
accipere possumus delictorum et servi esse cessamus, NtS1 
pretium pro nobis cruentus quondam victor accepit (In Ephes., 
i, 7 [XXVI, 450-1]). The whole passage seems to betray the 
influence of Origen. 

(E) I do not know whether it is necessary to add to this 
list St Basil by reason of a phrase rather rhetorical than dog- 
matic, In Psalm. xlviii, 3 (XXI1X, 437) : troyxetpious twas AaBov 
[6 S.dBoros] od mpdtepov adpinor mpiv dv tive AiTpHW akcodoyy 
reels avrarAAdgar Gar buas EAntat. 

But St Irenzeus ought not to figure in this list in any way, 
for he protests quite frequently that the devil had no real 
claims upon us. Cf. P. Galtier, La rédemption et les drotts 
du demon dans Saint Irénée, Paris, 1911 (extract from the 
Recherches de science relig., vol. ii, part I). 


2. An Entirely Different Concepiton.—lIt is thus presented 
by M. J. Riviére, Le dogme de la rédemption, p. 396: “ The 
devil has received from God the power to put men to death 
on account of their sins; but in attacking Jesus Christ, who 
is innocent, he seriously overstepped his constitutional rights ; 
it is, therefore, perfectly just that God, for this abuse of 
power, should deprive him of his captives. The devil no 
longer receives a ransom, but the just punishment of his 
crime.” This conception is met with especially in the Latin 
Fathers: St Hilary, In Psalm. ixviii, 8 (IX, 475); St Pacian, 
De baptismo, 4 (XIII, 1092); Ambrosiaster, Comment. in Col., 
ii, 15 (XVII, 431) and passim ; St Augustine, De 4b. arhitrio, 
III, x, 29-31 (XXXII, 1285-7); De trintiate, XII, xii, 16-19 
(XLII, 1026-9); St Leo, Serm., xxii, 3-4 (LIV, 196-7) and 
passim; St Caesarius of Arles, Hom. de Paschate, iit (LXVII, 
1049); St Gregory the Great, Moral., XVII, xxx, 46-47 
(LXXVI, 32-33). But it is found also in the Greek Fathers : 
St Chrysostom, In Joan. hom., \xviii, 2-3 (LIX, 372-373); 
Theodoret, De provid., x (LXXXIII, 748) ; St Cyril of Alex- 
andria, De incarn. Domini, xi (LXXV, 1433-6); St John 
Damascene, De fide orth., iii, 1 (XCIV, 984), whence it 
passed to St Thomas, Summa theol., 111, qu. I, a. I. 

The idea is often presented in another form. The devil, 
thinking his triumph easy, attacks Jesus Christ, and himself 
rushes to his own defeat. He deceives himself, he is the dupe 
of his hatred, he is caught in the snare, on the hook, in the 
trap: St Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio cat. magna, 24 (XLV, 66) ; 


444 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


St Augustine, Serm., cxxx, 2 (XXXVIII, 726: Redempior . . 
tetend1tt muscipulam crucem suam; posuit 1bt quast escam 
sanguinem suum) and passim ; St Gregory the Great, Moral., 
XXXlii, vi, 12-13 (LXXVI, 677-680: In hamo captus est, quia 
inde interiit unde devoravit) and passim ; St Isidore of Seville, 
I, xiv, 12 (LXXXIII, 567: Illusus est diabolus morte Domint 
guast avis. Nam ostensa Christus suae carnis mortalitate, quam 
anterimendam ille appetebat, abscondit divinitatem, ut laqueum 
quo eum velut avem improvidam prudenti trretiret decipula). 

These metaphors are of more than doubtful taste, especially 
when it is Jesus Christ who, with the connivance of his 
Father, prepares the snare or the hook; but they do not 
affect the purity of the theological doctrine, since it is under- 
stood that the devil has no claims on us, or that he has only 
those which God allows him for our punishment. 


3. Criticism of the Rights Possessed by the Devil._—This begins 
at an early date. We find it from the third century onwards, 
in the anonymous author of the De recta in Deum fide, attri- 
buted falsely to Origen (XI, 1756-7). The indignant protesta- 
tion of St Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat., xlv, 22 (XXXVI, 653) 
deserves to becited. The saintly doctor asks himself to whom 
the ransom offered by Christ has been paid: Ei pev rp rovypg, 
gpev THs UBpews, ed pr) mapa Oeovd povov, dAAa Kal tiv Oedv avrodv 
Aitpov 6 Anotns AapBaver kal picHdv ovtws Ureppv7y THS EavTov 
tupavvidos, 6.’ dv Kal yuav peiderOas Sikacov Hv. St John Damas- 
cene, De fide orth., iii, 27 (XCIV, 1096), condemns this repug- 
nant idea with no less force. But it is Abelard (In Roman.., 
ii, 3 and Epit. theol., 23, CLXXVIII, 833-5 and 1730-1) and 
St Anselm (Cur Deus homo, i, '7 and Medit., xi, CLVIII, 363-8 
and 763-4) who gave the theory of the devil’s rights the death- 
blow. After them there was merely a repetition of their 
arguments, which were decisive. 


II—SUBSTITUTION AND SATISFACTION 


1. The Fathers rarely develop the theory of substitution, 
but they always take it for granted when they say that Jesus 
Christ has paid our debt or our ransom, or has undergone the 
punishment which was due to us in our place. They often 
express this idea by compound words formed with the particle 
avrit. Jesus Christ is ravtwv av@pdérwv avragsos (St Basil, in 
Psalm. x\viii, XXIX, 440; St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyr. in 
Lewt., LXIX, 548 ; Clement of Alexandria, Quis dives salvetur, 
37, [X, 641, etc.), avrivyxos (Eusebius, De theoph., 3, XXIV, 616; 
Procopius of Gaza, In Isatam, liii, LXXXVII, 25, etc.), or 
avtadddaypwa (St Gregory Nazianzen, Orat., i, 5, XXV, 400, 
etc.). These forms of speech, of which there are numberless 
examples, are authorized by St Paul (1 Tim. 1i, 6: dvréAvrpov), 


DETACHED NOTES 445 


More than any other theory, that of substitution lent itself 
to exaggerations and erroneous deductions. The curious 
history of it will be found in Riviére (op. cit., pp. 373-445), 
and, for Protestants, in Lichtenberger (art. Rédemption in 
Encycl. des sciences relig., vol. xi, 143-4). M. Riviére (Les 
conceptions catholiques du dogme de la rédemption, in Rev. prat. 
d’apologétique, vol. xiii, 1911, pp. 5-32, 104-120, 161-176), 
affirms (p. 119) that “it is the Reformation which is respon- 
sible for putting into the foreground the notion of punish- 
ment and reducing Redemption to a mystery-of bloody 
substitution.” He is of opinion (p. 120) that “the idea of 
penal expiation is entirely accessory and that consequently, if 
given the front rank, it can only end in fallacies and disastrous 
errors.” 


2. The theory of satisfaction, at least as St Anselm presents 
it, is based upon the idea of substitution. It does not appear 
that the present meaning of the terms ‘‘to satisfy” and “ satis- 
faction” existed before St Anselm. It is not found notably 
in the two frequently quoted texts of St Hilary (In Psalm. 
liii, 12; IX, 344) and of St Ambrose (De fuga saec., vii, 44 ; 
XIV, 589). ‘Tertullian, St Cyprian, and other Latin Fathers 
make use of the terms frequently in order to signify the works 
of penitence by which the sinner seeks to appease God, but 
not to denote the work of redemption. According to 
M. Riviere (op. cit., p. 289), Raoul Ardent, towards the end of 
the eleventh century, was the first to give them this last 
meaning, without, however, applying them yet to the death of 
the Saviour. For the theory of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
cf. Bainvel, Anselme (Saint) in Dict. de théol. cathol.; and, 
among more recent authors, B. Funke, Satisfaktionstheorie des 
hl. Anselm von Canterbury, Minster-i.-W., 1903 (Kirchengesch. 
Studien, vol. vi, part 3); L. Heinrichs, Die Genugtuungstheorve 
des hl. Anselmus von Canterbury, Paderborn, 1909 (Forschungen 
zur christ. Liter. und Dogmengesch., vol. ix, part 1); Hugon, 
O.P., Le mystére de la rédemption, in the Rev. thomiste, 
vol. xviii (1909), pp. 406-421, 663-677 (and separately, Paris, 
1910); G. C. Foley, Anselm’s Theory of the Atonement, London, 
IQIo. 

The first scholastic doctors corrected little by little what 
was inaccurate or indefinite in St Anselm’s system. Peter 
Lombard called attention to the fact that the death of 
Christ was not the only way which God made use of to save 
men. Alexander of Hales and St Bonaventure taught that 
neither the Incarnation nor the Passion was absolutely and 
strictly required for our salvation, but only by an obligation 
of propriety or in consequence of the divine decree. St 
Thomas insisted that the merit of Christ is ours, since Christ 
is our Head and we are his members. Duns Scotus went 


446 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


beyond all bounds in declaring that the satisfaction of Jesus 
Christ neither possessed an infinite value nor needed to 
possess it to be adequate. But he had few followers. 


III—TuHE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY 


This principle, as we have said, has been recognized from 
the beginning and is becoming ever more and more recog- 
nized. We limit ourselves to a few salient features. 


1. St Ireneus speaks very often of the summing up of all 
things ‘in’ Christ: Haeves:, S111,” xviiij 1) xxiju0; Vt, 
v, I-2; xxi, I, etc. The idea resulting from all these pas- 
sages and other similar ones is that Christ begins the work 
of Adam again in the reverse way; that he comprises all 
humanity in himself, as Adam, of whom he is the antitype, 
also comprised it; and that therefore he must belong to the 
human family, in order to be its representative. All this 
tends to the notion of solidarity both in the fall and in the 
rehabilitation of mankind. But this idea is by no means 
peculiar to St Irenzeus. 


2. Many Fathers go further. Not only do they say that 
Jesus Christ had to be a man in order to save men, but they 
make the union between Christ and humanity represented by 
him so close, that the flesh is sanctified by his presence and 
healed by his contact. The result is always that in their eyes 
the human race is contained in Christ as in its chief and legal 
representative, so that the acts of Christ are morally the acts 
of the human family. Here are some texts chosen from the 
most concise, but not always the most expressive, statements : 
“God refashions and restores Adam by himself” (St. Hippo- 
lytus, De Christo et Antichristo, 26: ’AvarAdcowv 61’ éavtot Tov 
"Adau).—Deum in primo quidem Adam offendimus, non facientes 
equs praeceptum ; in secundo autem Adam reconctliatt sumus, 
obedientes usque ad mortem facti (St Irenzeus, Haeres., V, 
Xvi, 3).—E7rgo ex nobts accepit quod proprium offerret pro nobts, 
ut nos redimeret ex nostro. . . . Nam quae erat causa incarna- 
tionts nisi ut caro quae peccaverat per se redimeretur (St Ambrose, 
De incarnationis sacram., vi, 54 and 56, XVI, 832).—In eo 
(Christo) per naturam suscepti corporis quaedam universi generis 
humani congregatio continetur (St Hilary, In Maitt., iv, 12; 
IX, 935). These significant texts are not rare. 


3. The majority of modern authors adopt the principle of 
solidarity, already clearly stated by St Thomas. It is neces- 
sary to remark, however, that several of them do not under- 
stand it rightly. For them solidarity consists in the fact that 


DETACHED NOTES 447 


the Son of God, by assuming our nature and associating him- 
self with our destinies, accepts in advance his sufferings and 
death, which is, on his part, the greatest evidence of love. In 
this way the solidarity can be reconciled with the theory of a 
purely subjective redemption. Nevertheless, almost all these 
writers honestly warn their readers that their doctrine, which 
they claim is conformable to the teaching of Jesus, is not in 
harmony with that of Paul. 


NOTE V—“‘ FAITH” IN ST PAUL 


I—STATISTICS AND EVIDENCE 


1. The Verb “to Believe.” —Out of fifty-four cases, murrevew 
is employed fourteen times absolutely (especially in the parti- 
ciple o murredwv = the believer, the faithful). Of the forty other 
cases we must eliminate seven where miorever Oa in the passive 
has the classical meaning of ‘to take in charge” (Rom. iii, 2; 
1 Corix, 175/Galiaieg. tel hess 71194 ao ei hesssintos makin 
1, 11; Titus 1, 3).—In the thirty-three remaining cases, the 
indirect object is expressed twenty-six times and the direct 
object seven times. The indirect object is found: (a) With 
the dative (eight times) either of the thing (2 Thess. ii, 11, 12; 
Rom. x, 16), or of the person (Rom. iv, 3, 17; Gal. iii, 6; 
2 Tim. i, 12; Titus iti, 8).—(b) With eis (Rom. x, 14), twice 
(Gal. ii, 16; Phil. i, 29).—-(c) With eri and the dative (Rom. 
IX, 33; X, I1; I Tim. i, 16).—(d) With évi and the accusative 
(Rom. iv, 5, 24).—The direct object is found: (a) With the 
infinitive (Rom. xiv, 2: muréver dayetv, but the meaning is 
peculiar.—(6) With 6re (Rom. vi, 8; x, 9; 1 Thess. iv, 14).— 
(c) With the accusative (pépos Te rurtevw, 1 Cor. xi, 18 ; wavra 
muorever, I Cor. xiii, 7; but the sense of the first example is 
not religious nor perhaps that of the second). In 1 Tim. 
lili, 16 (ereorevOn ev xdcpw), the subject of the passive, and 
consequently the object of the corresponding active, is Christ. 


2. The Word “ Fatth.””—The word iors appears in all the 
Epistles without exception a hundred and forty-two times (not 
including the Epistle to the Hebrews). When we have dis- 
carded the very rare cases in which faith assumes a special 
meaning: faithfulness (Rom. iii, 3), good faith (Rom. xiv, 
22, 23), sworn faith " Tim. v, 12), or again charismatical fatth, 
faith working miracles (Rom. xii, 3, 6; 1 Cor. xii, g ; xiii, 2), 
we observe that “faith” is almost always employed absolutely 
or, by exception, accompanied either by a qualifying word or 
by a genitive, which may be possessive or objective. We 
perceive also that faith, according to the context, designates 
an act, a habit, or an object, which is none other than the 
Gospel or the Christian dispensation. Sometimes we hesitate 
between these three meanings. We may, however, lay down 
the following rules: (a) Faith is actual when it is related tc 
the justification which it produces (Rom. iii, 22, 28, 30; iv, 5, 
9,-11, 13, 103 v, 2 3 Gal) i316 51158) .o; 11 Phila 
(0) Faith is usually habitual when it has a personal pronoun in 
the genitive (Rom. i, 8, 12; 1 Thess. i, 3, 8; iii, 2, 5, 6, 7, etc.), 

448 


DETACHED NOTES 449 


when it is found in a list of virtues (Gal. v, 22 ; 2 Thess. i, 4; 
1 Tim. i, 14, etc.), when it is a question of the faith that abides 
(1 Cor. xiii, 13), increases (2 Cor. x, 15), Or of the Christian 
who lives (Gal. ii, 20), walks (2 Cor. v, 7) or perseveres in 
faith (1 Cor. xvi, 13, etc.).—(c) The faith is objective whenever 
it can be replaced by the word “ Gospel,” which happens, in 
particular, when it is put in opposition to the Law (Rom. 
iii, 31; iv, 14, etc.), and in a certain number of expressions, 
such as to preach the faith (Gal. i, 23), the word of faith 
(Rom. x, 8), obedience to the faith (Rom. i, 5; xvi, 26; 
Gal. iii, 2, etc.), the faith that comes and will come (Gal. i, 
elec bole nad b 

The genitive that follows the word “ faith”? is naturally 
possessive when it is a personal pronoun : “our faith, your 
faith”; it is objective when it is the name of a thing: 2 Thess. 
ii, 13 (ev wioter dAnGeias), Col. ii, 12 (cuvnyepOnre bud Tis TiTEws 
Ts évepyeias Tov Qeov), Phil. i, 27 (suvabAovvres TH Winter ToL 
evayyeXiov) : faith im the truth, in the power of God, im the 
Gospel. 


II—JusTIFYING FaITH, THE FORM OF WHICH IS CHARITY 


In contrast to the Judaizers who expect justification or the 
perfection of justice from the observance ot the Law, the true 
Christian expects justice from faith: “Hyets yap mvebpate €K 
miotews eAriSa Sixacoovyys amexbexspeba (Gal. v, 5: Nos enim 
spiritu ex fide, spem justitiae expectamus. Read this without 
any comma, which the sense excludes). The last words 
ought not to be translated “ we have the hope”—that is to 
say, “we hope”’—for éAmis here is not subjective (hope) but 
objective (the thing hoped for), as in a very similar passage 
(Titus ii, 13: mpordexopevor Thy paxapiay éAvida). In its turn the 
expression éAmis Suxavoovvns Cannot be a genitive of apposition 
(the justice hoped for), if we understand by justice justification, 
since St Paul is speaking expressly of those who are already 
Christians. Consequently either S:xarorvvn expresses an in- 
crease of justice—and we thus obtain an idea which har- 
monizes well with the pretended perfection of justice which 
the Judaizers expect from the observance of the Law—or 
else, as is more generally admitted, it isa possessive genitive : 
“the blessings which justice hopes for.” In any case, it is 
from faith (é« wiorews) that we expect either the progress or 
the recompense of justice. 

The Apostle gives the following reasons for this (Gal. v, 6): 


Ev yap X. I. obre reprtopy Te Nam in Christo Jesu neque 
ioxyter obre dxpoBvoia, G\Aa circumcisio aliquid valet, neque 
riotis 80 aydamns évepyoupern. praeputium, sed fides quae per 
charitatem operatur. 
IL. 29 


450 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Thus, in conformity with the true principles of Christianity 
and for the true Christian (ev Xpior@ *Inoot) circumcision 
avails no more than uncircumcision, but faith alone can avail 
anything ((oxvec te, for it is a question of obtaining justice or 
an increase of justice), on condition that it is united to 
charity. There has been much and indeed too much dis- 
cussion over the question whether evepyoupevn is passive (faith 
made active or put into operation by charity), as profane 
usage, the Greek Fathers in general, and a great number of 
commentators would have it, or whether it is a means (faith 
which works by charity, which acts through charity), as the 
Latin Fathers and the majority of modern commentators 
think, in accordance with the ordinary usage of the New 
Testament, In both cases faith acts only by virtue of its 
union with charity and because it derives its efficacy there- 
from. Juxta Apostolum (says Palmieri, Comment.in Gal., 1886, 
p. 207) fides quae valet in Christo Jesu, est fides operans per 
charitatem, conjuncta proinde charitati et ab ea formata; atqua 
fides, quae justificat, est certe fides quae plurimum valet in 
Christo, cum nos eidem conjungat : ergo fides justificans est fides 
formata charitate. Neque Protestantes unguam rationem reddent 
cur charitas non requisita ad justificandum, requiratur ad con- 
servandam justitiam, alts verbts, cur, st justus fio sola fide, 
nequeam perseverare justus, sola perseverante fide. It is sur- 
prising to see the Protestants always repeating the objection 
that if charity is the form of faith, it is an essential part of 
faith. St Thomas refuted this quibble in advance: Non dtct- 
tur esse forma fide charitas per modum quo forma est pars 
essentiae, stc enim contra fidem dividt non posset ; sed in quan- | 
tum aliquam perfectionem fides a charitate consequitur, sicut in 
untuerso elementa supertora dicuntur esse ut forma inferiorum 
(De Verit., qu. xiv, a. 5 ad 1). All Catholic theologians 
express themselves in the same way. 

There is an important monograph on this subject by 
J. Wieser (Pault apost. doctrina de justificatione ex fide sine 
operibus et ex fide operante, Trent, 1874), but we dare not 
recommend it, because the author makes Paul think too much 
after the fashion of the scholastic categories and because he 
does not seem to us to have always apprehended the meaning 
of the Apostle. On the contrary, the study of B. Bartmann 
(S. Paulus and S. Jacobus tiber die Rechtfertigung, 1897, in 
Biblische Studien, vol. ii, part 1) deserves to be read. 


ITI—THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF JUSTIFYING FAITH 


1. The Dogma “ Sola Fide.” —All the Protestant confessions 
of faith agree on this formula, although they understand it 
differently. The Augsburg Confesston of 1530 understands by 
it spectal taith: Ftde hoc beneficium [justificationts] acciprendum 


DETACHED NOTES 451 


est, qua credere nos oportet, quod propter Christum nobis donen- 
tur remissio peccatorum et justificatio. It is true one reads 
a little further on: Fides hic non tantum htstoriae notitiam 
significat, sed significat credere promissioni misericordiae quae 
nobis per Mediatorem Christum contigit. The non tantum con- 
tradicts the preceding assertion; but that merely proves the 
usual indecision of the reformers. Moreover, most of the 
confessions adhere to the general formula: Credimus nos sola 
hide fiert hujus justitiae participes. The Gallican Confession 
(formulated in 1559, presented to Charles IX in 1561 at the 
Conference of Poissy), No. 20—Sola fide nos justificari doc- 
trina est saluberrima. The Anglican Confession of 1562, 
Art. 11—Mertto cum Paulo dicimus: Nos sola fide justificart 
seu fide absque opertbus. The Acts of the Synod of Dordrecht 
of 1561, No. 22. Similarly the Confession of Bdle of 1547, 
the Saxon Confession of 1551, the Swiss Confession ot 
1566, etc. 

There were two difficulties: that faith is never alone, and 
that it is not any kind of faith that justifies, but living faith. 
Why, then, has faith only the power to justify rather than 
charity which accompanies it, and what is the life of faith ? 

The leaders of Protestantism did not contest the fact that 
living faith ought to be accompanied by other dispositions. 
Luther admitted the need of hope (In Gal., v, 5: Fides et spes 
vix discernt possunt). Calvin apparently included charity 
also. But Luther vigorously denied that faith owed to 
charity its power to justify (/m Gal., iii, 12: Haec fides sine et 
ante charitatem justificat). Melancthon’s merit was to dis- 
cover the convenience of this distinction. When it was 
objected: Faith, according to you, is confidence; but in con- 
fidence there is charity ; therefore it is charity that justifies ; 
he replied: Concedo in fiducta tnesse dilectionem et hanc virtutem 
plerasque alias adesse oportere. But it is not, he added, on 
account of the other virtues that one is justified, but on 
account of faith. The other virtues are concomitant, because 
they are not adequately distinguished from faith or because 
they are inseparable from it, but it is faith only that is active 
or receptive, according to the system adopted. 


2. How and Why Faith Justifies —The founders of Protes- 
tantism taught at first that faith was the formal cause of our 
justification—namely, that in which our justification consists. 
Thus Luther on Gal. ii, 16: Ea [vera fiducia cordis] est formalis 
justitia propter quam homo justificatur, non propter charitatem, 
ut sophistae loqguuntur. Which Thomas Illyricus explained as 
follows: Fiduciamin Christum esse nostram formalem justitiam 
seu imputari nobis in justitiam,; but here there is a contradic- 
tion in terms. Calvin also calls faith “the formal or instru- 
mental cause of justification” (dmstt., III, xiv, 17); but the 


452 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


formal and the instrumental cause mutually exclude each other. 
On the other hand, the Augsburg Confession seems to teach that 
faith justifies merely Be its presence, without any influence or 
causality on its part: Cum dicimus Fide justificamur, on hoc 
inteligimus quod just simus propter tpstus virtutis dignitatem. 
Sed haec est sententia: Consequa nos remissionem peccatorum 
et imputationem justitiae per misericordiam propter Christum. 

The official doctrine of Protestantism is, however, that 
faith is the tnstrument of justification: dpyavov AnrriKoy. 
Only some imagine this instrument to be a purely receptive 
power, while others concede it a certain activity. Moreover, 
the majority refuse to examine the question how faith 
justifies ; this, according to them, would be a superfluous and 
harmful curiosity. Luther, when urged to do so, burst out in 
invectives against sophists and their pernicious, pestilential, 
infernal, devilish, satanic, and blasphemous sophisms. It was 
sufficient, he said, to know the part which faith plays, with- 
out being necessary to scrutinize its nature. Protestants have 
always preferred the negative definition of justifying faith : 
‘Tt is neither belief in mysteries, nor belief in historical facts, 
not even in the fact of redemption, nor miracle-working faith, 
nor the simulated faith of Simon the Magician.” They can 
be divided into two great theological schools, one of which 
accords to faith no moral value, while the other recognizes 
in it a certain value. 

(A) Justifying Faith, a Purely Receptive Power.—Luther con- 
stantly protested that faith was not indebted to charity for the 
power to justify, because it justified “without charity and 
before it” (In Efist. ad Gal., iii, 12), because “it is not charity 
which ornaments and animates faith, but faith which orna- 
ments and animates charity” (In Gal., ii, 19). Yet Melanc- 
thon—and Calvin too, apparently—made no difficulty in 
conceding that faith was inseparable from at least an initial 
charity and from several other virtues (which Luther could 
not deny in the case of hope), but they maintained that we 
are justifed on account of faith only, and not because of 
these concomitant virtues. Since then certain writers, more 
Lutheran than Luther, have endeavoured to prove that faith is 
not an act, but something purely Passive, since St Paul opposes 
it to works ; and that it is without moral value, so jealous are 
they to maintain that it has no positive influence on salvation, 
and that it is only the condition of it pure and simple. But 
then they are obliged to give up explaining why it is pleasing 
to God and glorifies him, and why it is required for justifica- 
tion. Very early the idea occurred to them to say that faith 
justified because it took possession of (apprehendebat) Christ 
as Redeemer. Gerhard, in his De justificatione, is the one 
who has presented this point of view most clearly (section 
153): Fides non jusitficat vel meritorie, vel per modum dispost- 


* 


DETACHED NOTES 453 


tionis, sed organice [t.e., as an instrument, dpyavov] et per 
modum apprehensionis, guatenus meritum Christt in verbo 
Evangel oblatum complectitur. Consequently, justifying faith 
is defined (ibid., § 117): Fiductalis apprehensto Christi Media- 
toris ac beneficiorum ejus, quae in verbo Evangelit nobis offer- 
untur. Faith seizes upon Christ, takes possession of him, 
renders him present in us, and makes us possess him; it is 
the eye that perceives and the hand that receives. In this 
there is, as a student of philosophy would see at once, a great 
confusion between real possession and intentional possession, 
between the effective and the ideal presence of the object in 
the cognitive faculty. By this mode of reckoning the desire 
for a treasure would make us rich and the contemplation of a 
beautiful scene would make us beautiful. 

(B) Justifying Faith the Germ of Virtue.—Iit can be said that 
the preceding conception has been somewhat given up in our 
time. ‘We are so accustomed,” says Feine (Theolog. des 
N.T., Leipzig, 1910, p. 424), ‘to the Protestant formula 
‘justification by faith only,’ that many Christians imagine that 
this formula existed already in St Paul, and think that the 
Apostle always conceives of faith as something passive, as 
opposed to works. This is an erroneous idea.” In fact, the 
analysis of faith shows that there is in it an active principle 
and amoral value. “ Faith,” says Beyschlag (Neutest. Theol.?, 
1896, vol. ii, p. 179), “is a convinced trust and a trustful 
conviction” (ein tiberzeugtes Vertrauen, etn vertrauensvolles 
Ueberzeugtsein). Indeed, to believe in anyone it is necessary 
to trust in him, to have confidence that he will keep his word. 
“ Consequently faith is fit to constitute the moral foundation 
of the whole life.” Pfleiderer’s conclusion is not very 
different (Der Paulinismus?, p. 169): Religious faith is the 
act of holding a thing to be true (Ein Fiurwahrhalten) without 
logical grounds, but by virtue of the moral disposition of 
having trust in God, of trusting in his veracity, power and 
faithfulness ; in this consists the respect due to God, the 
honour which is given him, and hence the fundamental 
disposition from a religious point of view (worin eben die 
schuldige Achtung gegen Gott, das ihm die Ehre Geben, also 
die religidse Grundstimmung besteht). Holtzmann also says 
(N.T. Theol., vol, ii, 1, 122: “We believe anyone because 
we trust him” (Man glaubt einem, weil man thm traut). 

These observations have brought about two changes in 
Protestant exegesis and dogmatics. In the first place, no 
more difficulty is found in admitting the moral value, the 
ethical character of faith—that which is called its vs activa ; 
we thus gain a better comprehension of the influence of faith 
on justification, an influence so often affirmed by St Paul. 
and also of the influence of living faith on the production 
of good works, an influence wholly unintelligible in a system 


454 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


of purely receptive faith. In the second place, little stress is 
now laid upon the total distinction between justification and 
sanctification, and it is conceded that these two things are 
inseparable, that they are two different aspects of the same 
thing, and that justification could not be conceived of with- 
out the principle or germ of sanctification. But then the 
whole Protestant theory of justification must be transformed, 
for nothing remains but traditional formulas, which Protes- 
tants still try to maintain by conviction or force of habit, but 
by depriving them of their original meaning. 


IV—TuHE FaItTH OF JESUS CHRIST 


J. Haussleiter (Der Glaube Jesu Christi und der chnistil. 
Glaube, ein Beitrag zur Erklarung des Romerbriefs, in Neue 
karchl. Zeitschrift, vol. ii, 1891, pp. 109-145 and 205-230), 
while recognizing that he is going against common opinion, 
maintains that the faith of Jesus Christ must signify, at least in 
the Epistle to the Romans, the faith which Jesus had (subjec- 
tive genitive): (a) The readers of Paul would not have other- 
wise understood him (Rom. iii, 26: Stxasotvra tov éx wicrews 
‘Inoov) ; for the first Christians believed that Jesus had become 
Christ and Lord only after his resurrection ; hence, there 
could not have been for them any question of faith in Jesus. 
—(b) The parallel expression (Rom. iv, 16: 7@ é« micrews 
"ABpadu), which clearly signifies the subjective faith of 
Abraham, invites us to take rdv é« ricrews "Incov in the same 
sense.—(c) ‘The Apostle purposely chooses the expression 
miotis ’Incot to show that he means the faith which Jesus 
himself had during his mortal life. The expression réoris 
Xpirrov would be ambiguous.” Rom. iii, 22, da micrews 
‘Inoov Xpirrov, must be understood in the same way, because 
the name of Jesus comes first.—Haussleiter, in Neue Kirchl. 
Zeitschrift, vol. ii (1891), pp. 507-520, resumes his subject 
under the title : Eze theol. Disputation tiber den Glauben Jesu. 
He has discovered a dissertation by a certain Ritter, read at 
the University of Greifswald, August 29, 1704 (De fide Christi, 
sive utrum Christus habuerit fidem ?), in which Ritter maintains 
the thesis of Christ’s subjective faith, and cites in support of 
it four Protestant theologians. 

In spite of this patronage, Haussleiter’s thesis was not 
cordially received. Hilgenfeld (Zeitschrift fiir wissensch. 
Theol., vol. xxxv, p. 391) criticized it very severely. Almost 
alone, G. Kittel (Iléeris Incot Xpiorod bei Paulus, in Stud. und 
Krit., 1xxix, 1906, pp. 419 436) gave him his support, without, 
however, bringing forward any new arguments. “In them- 
selves,” he says (p. 419), “ both opinions are equally probable ; 
grammatically also they are equally possible; in fact, if 
there is a faith 1 Christ, there must have been a faith of 


DETACHED NOTES 455 


aa Why? Schlager, Bemerkungen zu ILioris Inoov 
ptaror in Zeitschrift fir N.T. Wissenschaft, vol. vii 

(1906), pp. 356-8, referring to the article of Kittel, pro- 
poses a radical solution: in Rom. iii, 22 and iii, 26, the 
words ‘Incod and “Incod Xpwrrov do not belong to the 
primitive text. For Gal. ii, 16 and iii, 22 he proposes 
the same remedy. It is true there is neither testimony nor 
any indication whatever in favour of this elimination, ‘‘ but,” 
says Schlager, ‘‘it is now or never the time to have recourse 
to the principles of high criticism to correct a difficult text.” 
It is plain that criticism aided by the imagination is not the 
monopoly of the so-called Dutch school. 

In spite of Haussleiter and his few followers, modern 
exegetes, Catholics, Protestants, and Rationalists, persist in 
seeing in “the faith of Christ” faith 1m Christ. Four decisive 
reasons for this can be given: 

_ (a) Independently of the difficulty of conceiving of a subjec- 
tive faith in Jesus Christ, the New Testament is completely 
unaware of such a faith. The verb ‘to believe” never has 
Christ for a subject. Even in Heb. xii, 2 (auctor fider et 
consummator) it is not a question of an act of faith on the 
part of Jesus. This presumption is fatal to the opposite ~ 
theory. 

(b) On the contrary, Christ is constantly represented as the 
object of Christian faith (Gal. ii, 16 ; Col. ii, 5; Philem. 5, etc.). 
Jesus is as truly the object of faith as Christ himself (Rom. 
x, 9; I Cor. xii, 3; 2 Cor. iv, 5, 14)—a fact which annihilates 
the quibbles of Haussleiter. 

(c) In the other Books of the New Testament the faith of 
Christ is incontestably faith in Christ (James ii, 1; Apoc. ii, 
13 ; xiv, 12), as the faith of God is faith in God in St Mark 
xi, 22, as also in Philo and the Talmud. Even in St Paul 
himself one can invoke the analogy of the expressions “ faith 
of the Gospel” (Phil. i, 27), ‘faith of the truth” (2 Thess. 
ii, 13), ‘‘ faith of the power of God” (Col. 4i, 12). 

(d) Finally the context shows that it is a question of the 
faith of the faithful in Christ, and not the personal faith of 
Christ. 


NOTE W—MAN’S JUSTICE AND GOD'S JUSTICE 


I—JusTICE IN MAN 


1. Preliminary Notions.— Just” and “justice” are relative 
notions, while ‘' good” and “ goodness” are absolute notions. 
A thing is good (aya86v) by reason of its intrinsic excellence ; 
a thing is just (Sixavov) when it conforms to a rule—for example, 
to the custom (éxn) considered as the expression of what is 
right, right itself being regarded as the expression of the 
divine will; for in all primitive societies the customary or 
positive idea of right is believed to go back ultimately to the 
gods.—The epithet Sixaws is applied metaphorically to every 
object (a car, the earth, a horse, a writer, a doctor, etc.) 
which realizes normal conditions (compare the Latin justum 
volumen) ; but we cannot say, by catachresis, “a just thief” 
as we can say “a good thief” (excellent in his way), because 
he does not correspond to the standard of right. In the same 
way, although the prevailing laws were in general regarded 
as the expression of the right, the ancients had nevertheless 
the notion of ‘ unjust” laws, when they were opposed to the 
higher law which nature writes in the conscience; and the 
observance of these laws did not make a man just.—What- 
ever may be the fundamental meaning of the root PT¥ (“to be 
right,” in opposition to what is tortuous or crooked, “to 
go to the goal,” in opposition to that which turns aside), it is 
certain that the Hebrew P'%¥ (just) and P1¥ (justice) designate 
the Greek Sixatos and dixasoodvn, conformity to the right; 
only the right is fully identified with the will of God, known 
by revelation. Among the Greeks justice was a social virtue ; 
it was piety (evoéBia) which comprised duties towards the 
gods, unless those duties were regulated by law, in which case 
they returned to the category and concept of justice. Among 
the Hebrews justice is a religious virtue; a person is just 
when, in his whole conduct, he conforms to the divine will ; 
a thing is just when it corresponds to the will of God, 
manifested in the Torah. It is only metaphorically that they 
speak of a just weight, balance, or measure—that is, as corre- 
sponding to the normal standard. 


2. Forensic Justice or Real Justice ?—But it is one thing to 
affirm that the justice of man is a relative concept in the sense 
that it implies an essential relation to an external rule, and it is 
another thing to claim that it is a purely forensic notion. This 
thesis, maintained among others by Cremer, fortified by a great 
supply of texts and quotations (Wérterbuch® and Die paulin. 
Rechtfertigungslehre), rests only on an ambiguity. Cremer relies 

456 


‘ 


DETACHED NOTES 457 


upon the fact that the words “just” and “ justice” are very 
often put into correlation with the words “judge, to judge” and 
‘judgement ” ; but it is entirely natural that the ideas of right 
and justice frequently call up the ideas of judgement and judge, 
and this does not at all prove that the former are forensic—that 
is to say, exist only through their relation to the latter. The 
judge must judge according to the law, must recognize justice 
and do justice to the just (Lev. xix, 15, etc.); it follows that 
justice exists before the verdict of the judge, and is not con- 
stituted by him. The judge “who justifies the wicked and 
taketh away the justice of the just from him” (Is. v, 23) does 
not alter in the least the intrinsic nature of the just and 
unjust ; which proves that his self-interested verdict does not 
constitute justice, although it takes for granted its existence. 
Similarly, God condemns the wicked and justifies the just 
(1 Kings viii, 31), because his judgement is conformable to 
truth—another proof that the just are just before the divine 
verdict and not by virtue of it, as the wicked are wicked 
before their condemnation. 


3. Justice Imputed or Justice Inherent ?—According to the 
Catholic doctrine, those whom God has justified are really 
and truly just : St Augustine, De spir. et lit., 26: Gratia Der 
justificamur, hoc est justi efficomur. Opus imperf., ii, 65 : 
Justificat impium Deus non solum dimittendo quae mala fecit sed 
etiam donando caritatem ut declinet a malo et faciat bonum per 
Spir. S. The Greek Fathers speak as do the Latins. St 
Chrysostom (on Rom. iv, 5) thus explains the justification of 
the wicked (LX, 456) : obx! KoAdcews éXevPepGcar pdovov, GAAG Kal 
Sixavov rowujoat. The Council of Trent epitomizes its teaching 
in these terms (Sess. vi, cap. 7): Justificatio non est sola 
peccatorum remissio, sed et sanctificatio et renovatio interioris 
hominis per voluntariam susceptionem gratiae et donorum. 
Unde homo ex injusto fit justus. Moreover, the leaders of 
Protestantism did not pretend to rely upon tradition; and 
they declared that the Fathers had not understood the 
doctrine of the Apostle at all. Luther and Calvin did not 
make an exception even of St Augustine, and with greater 
reason they abandoned the others with a light heart. Bucer 
and Chemnitz acknowledged that the majority of the Fathers 
understand “to justify” in the sense of ‘‘to make just ”; but 
they cared nothing about them. In our days these avowals 
are still not rare. Franks writes in Hastings’ Diction. of 
Christ and the Gospels, vol. i, p. 920: ‘‘The doctrine of Paul 
was a dead letter until the day when the Reformation revived 
it”’ Of which doctrine does he speak? The Protestants had 
several of them at the beginning, and they have not succeeded 
in coming to an understanding on so fundamental a subject. 
It is true, after long hesitation, they almost agreed on the 


458 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


formula of tmputed justice, but they have always understood 
it in two very different ways. They said either that the 
justice of Christ 1s imputed to us by God in consideration of faith 
(faith being only a condition whose presence is necessary for 
some reason), or that fatth 1s imputed to us as justice (that is to 
say, that God regards faith as taking the place of the absent 
justice). What is more extraordinary is that they thought 
they were employing the very formulas of Paul. They per- 
ceived a little later that the imputation of the justice of Christ 
lacks a Scriptural foundation, and that the Apostle speaks 
of faith imputed éo justice, and not of faith imputed as justice ; 
but when people hastily construct new dogmas, they never 
think of all the difficulties that may arise. However that may 
be, here are their formulas: “ Justification is an act by which 
God . . . moved merely by pity and because of the redemp- 
tion accomplished by his Son, tmputes the justice of Christ to 
every believing sinner ” (Formula of Concord),— Justification 
consists in the remission of sins and in the fact that the Justice 
of Christ is imputed to us” (Calvin, Institut., III, xi, 2).—Deus 
propter solum Christum passum et resuscitatum propitius est 
peccatts nostris nec illa nobis imputat, imputat autem justitiam 
Christi pro nostra (Swiss Confession of 1566, cap. xv).— 
In sola J. C. obedientia prorsus accquiescimus, quae quidem 
nobis imputatur (Gallican Conf. of 1559, No. 18).—Meritum 
J.C. “ fit nostrum per fidem”’ (Wiirtemberg Conf. of 1552).— 
J.C. nobts imputans*omnia sua merita (Acts of the Synod of 
Dordrecht of 1561, No. 22). 

By this system the justice of Christ is imputed to us without 
being given to us. Protestations against this doctrine com- 
menced early. From 1550 onwards, Osiander maintained 
that justification is an act of the God of truth, and that God 
would be unjust if he held someone to be just who is really 
not just. That was precisely what all the Catholics said: 
Quando Deus justificat impium, declarando gustum, facit etiam 
justum, quoniam judicium Dei secundum veritatem est (Bellar- 
mine, De justific., ii, 3).—Verbum Domini ejusque voluntas 
efficax est, et hoc ipso quod aliquem justum esse pronunciat, aut 
supponit eum justum esse, aut reipsa justum facit, ne verbum 
ejus mendax sit (Vasquez, qu. Cxil, disp. 202, c. 5). 


4. Eschatological Justice or Actual Justice ?>—Ever since 
Kant’s day, the Protestants have been emancipating them- 
selves more and more from the confessions of faith. They 
admit, as an axiom, that faith is a germ or a principle of the 
virtuous life, and they say, with Kant, that God judges us 
according to our ideal, and that he considers as already pro- 
duced all the fruit that will develop from this germ; or, with 
Neander, that in the eyes of God all that is to issue from the 
principle is the same as if realized in the principle itself. 


DETACHED NOTES 459 


This is the point of departure of that eschatological justifica- 
tion of which so much is said to-day. It is thought that thus 
everything will be safeguarded: the moral value of faith and 
its active energy and the truth of the divine judgement and 
the act of grace, which imputes to us more than we really 
have. On the numerous Protestant theologians who sub- 
scribe to this new theory, cf. A. Matter, J ustification, in Encycl. 
des Sciences relig., vol. vii, pp. 570-571. 

It is not without surprise that we see a Catholic advance 
theories which have at least verbal resemblances to the 
system of eschatological justification. For example: ‘In 
St Paul justification always consists in the decree of admission 
to the messianic kingdom. . . . Present justification is at the 
same time future justification ; he knows only one, namely 
messianic justification. . . . He wishes to show the certainty 
of eternal life for those who are now reconciled with God by 
Jesus Christ. ... The Christian possesses in himself the 
pledge of divine adoption and salvation, and is certain of the 
verdict of justification on the day of judgement.... Man is 
justified by his faith in Christ and possesses the certainty of 
his justification, as long as he believes.’ These and other 
similar phrases call for corrections or explanations. A 
Catholic cannot say that the Christian is, henceforth, sure of 
his justification, sure Of his salvation, and sure of his future 
admission to the messianic and eschatological kingdom. The 
certainty of hope is one thing, the certainty of salvation is 
quite another. The hope of salvation 1s certain, because it is 
founded on the infallible promise of God (a formal object) ; 
the fact of salvation itself is not certain, because it is condi- 
tioned by the inconstancy of a will that is always fallible. 


II—Paut’s IDEA OF THE JUSTICE OF GoD 


Until these later years it was universally admitted that 
St Paul gives to the expression ‘justice of"God” two not 
incongruous but certainly different meanings (the justice 
which is in God and the justice which comes from God) : the 
former is found in Rom. iii, 5, 25, 26, the latter in Rom. i, 17; 
iii, 21, 22; x, 3; 2 Cor. v, 21; of. Phil. ili, 9. In 18go, in the 
explanation of the Epistle to the Romans which forms part 
of the Pulpit Commentary, p. xi, J. Barmby modified the usual 
opinion thus : ‘In the whole Epistle, Sixacocvvy Ocov signifies 
the eternal justice of God and, even in the passages where a 
justice that comes from faith is mentioned as communicated 
to man, the essential basic idea is the personal justice of God 
including believers in itself.’ The suggestion was accepted 
with some reservations by Robertson (The Thinker, November, 
1893), taken up again by its author in an article in the Ex- 
positor (5th series, vol. iv, 1896, pp. 124-139), and applied to 


460 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Rom. i, 17; iii, 21, 22, but with no allusion to Rom. x, 3 and 
2 Cor. v, 21, where the application would seem contrary to 
any sound exegesis. H. Beck (Die Acxcasooivn Ocod bei Paulus 
in Neue Jahrbticher f. deutsch. Theol., vol. iv, 1895, pp. 249-261) . 
seized upon the thesis of Barmby, but without citing him, 
according to a custom quite extensively employed among the 
scholars beyond the Rhine. Much more substantial is the 
dissertation by Kélbing (Studien zur paulin. Theol. in Theol. 
Studien und Kritik., vol. Ixviii, 1895, pp. I-51), which limits 
itself exclusively to the exegesis of Rom. i, 17 and ili, 25. 
According to Kélbing, in the two verses in question the 
justice of God must be understood as a “just conduct of God, 
which consists in the bestowal of justice on man or rather 
contains in itself that bestowal.” In the following year 
appeared the monograph “of Haring (Acxavootvn Ocov bei 
Paulus, Tibingen, 1896) approved by Holtzmann (Theol. 
Literaturzeitung, vol. xxi, 1896, pp. 645-646), who regrets not 
having been able to utilize it for his Theologie des N.T. A 
little later, C. Bruston (La notion de la justice de Dieu chez 
St Paul in Revue de Théol. et des questions reltg., vol. vii, 1898, 
pp. 86-95) espoused the explanation of Barmby, reproaching 
Sanday for not adhering to it. More recently, the Abbé 
Tobac (Le probléme de la justification dans St Paul, Louvain, 
1908, pp. 116-129) has defended the new exegesis fully and 
with conviction. 

In reality, as M. Tobac justly remarks (op. cit., pp. 117-118), 
this exegesis goes back to Ritschl, who “understood by the 
justice of God in the New Testament not a quality of. man, 
but a divine attribute; not repressive or retributive justice, 
but a normal and consistent line of conduct, conformably to 
which the heavenly Father remains faithful to his promises 
and pursues in the world the ultimate salvation of his chil- 
dren. Since Ritschl, this conception of the justice of God as 
a divine attribute (subjective genitive) has been widely circu- 
lated, but with such complex shades of opinion that it would 
be impossible to go into the details of the different explana- 
tions.” Cf. Frutsart, La justice de Dieu dans St Paul 
(Recherches de science relig., vol. li, IQII, pp. 161-182). 

We have already said what reasops prevent us from adopt- 
ing the exegesis inaugurated by Ritschl : (2) In Rom. i, 17 ; 
iii, 21, 22, the context requires a justice which is within the 
Christian and not outside of him.—(b) In Rom. x, 3 and 
1 Cor. v, 21 this explanation enforces itself with stil] greater 
clearness,—(c) Phil. iii, 9 defines without a possible doubt the 
subjective character of this justice.—(d) Finally, the concep- 
tion of the justice of God as a divine attribute, in the system 
of Ritschl, is inadequate. | 


NOTE X—ON BAPTISM 


I—To BAPTIZE AND BAPTISM 


1. The word Barrifew seems to be the frequentative of Bar- 
rev, “to immerse,” which is found only four times in the New 
Testament, but is common in the Septuagint, where, on the 
contrary, Barrifeav is found only four times (2 Kings v, 14; 
Is. xxi, 4 [figuratively] ; Eccli. xxxiv, 30; Judith xii, 7). 

To baptize signifies, therefore, etymologically, “ to dip into 
the water several times.” But this etymological sense is modi- 
fied by usage. Indeed, 2 Kings v, 14 and Judith xii, 7 prove 
that BarriferOa was used of a legal purification or of a simple 
lotion without any idea of immersion, and still less of repeated 
immersion. This is also the meaning which we find in the 
New Testament whether for the verb or for the substantive : 
Mark vii, 4 (da’ dyopas éav py Barricwvrat otk érOiover ; another 
reading pavricwvrat) ; Luke xi, 38 (ob rpGrov éBarricOn mpd TOU 
dpiorov) ; Heb. ix, Io (emt Bpopact Kat mépace Kal Suahdpots 
Barri pois). The word was used again figuratively to signify 
“to plunge into” affliction, calamities, etc., as in Is. xxi, 4 
(dvouia pe Barrife). This meaning is found again in Mark x, 
38, 39; Luke xii, 50. But in general, “baptism” and “to 
baptize’ denote absolutely the baptism of John or Christian 
baptism. 

The series of meanings of the word “to baptize” is, there- 
fore, the following : 

A. To dip (into the water) several times, or simply to dip, 
immerse. 

B. To purify by plunging into the water, or simply to 
wash. 

C. To confer baptism by immersion or otherwise. 


> In St Paul the word “baptism” appears only three 
times and always denotes Christian baptism: twice as a 


mystical burial, once as a principle of unity in the Church : 


(a) Rom. vi, 4: ouveradnpev adT@ Sia TOV Barriopatos. 
(b) Col. ii, 12: ouvrapéevtes atT@ ev TH Bartiopate, 
(c) Eph. iv, 5: els Kipsos, pia riotis, év Barticpa. 

It will be noticed that the Apostle does not use the active 
form Barrirpds, but the passive form Bdrripa, which denotes 
rather the result of baptism, although in practice the two 
forms are almost equivalent. 

The word ‘to baptize” appears thirteen times ; but three 
times it is a question of a baptism by analogy: I Cor. xv, 29 
(twice), it is a question of the obscure rite called baptism for 
the dead (of Bamriftduevor vrép ra vexpov) ; I Cor. x, 2: “ All 

461 


462 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


were baptized tm Moses (eis r3v Mwiiofv) in the cloud and in 
the sea,” as Christians are baptized in Christ. The ten other 
examples are included in four texts. 

(2) Rom. vi, 3 (twice): to be baptized in Christ Jesus (eis 
Xpwordv Inootv) or in his death (ets Tov Odvarov adrod), 

(5) Gal. iii. 27 : to be baptized in Christ (ets Xpiordv). 

(c) 1 Cor. xii, 13: to be baptized into one body (eés év copa), 

(2)finCoret Si a,are cate baptize in the name of someone 
(eis 73 dvoua) ; 1, 14,16: to baptize someone ; i, 17: to baptize 
(absolutely). 

We see that the Apostle uses both these remarkable expres- 
sions, which it is opportune to study closely : to baptize in 
(eis) someone or something, and to baptize im the name of 
someone (éis 7d dvopua), ; 


1I—To Baprize 1n Curist (eis Xpirrév) 


I. How must we interpret the Pauline expressions “to be 
baptized in Christ” (Gal. ili, 27: eis Xpuordv éBarricOnre) or 
“in Christ Jesus” (Rom. vi, 3)? Does the preposition eis 
express a simple relation, or is it to be taken in an almost 
local sense, Christ representing the element, the medium, into 
which we are immersed by baptism? Several exegetes see 
in it only a simple relation, for : (2) To baptize does not 
necessarily signify to dip, but can mean to wash, to purify,— 
(5) The analogous expressions, Bamrifer Oar eis peravotay, eis 
adery duaptiov, show that eis does not _express the entry 
into a medium or element, but marks only the tendency or 
aim.—(c) A comparison with 1 Cor. X, 2 (wavres eis Tov Mwiiony 
éBarticavro) seems to prove the same thing. 

It is very true, as we have said above, that Barrifew does not 
always signify to immerse into a medium, But if this mean- 
ing is not demanded by the word itself, neither is it excluded, 
and it can very well be expressed by ets (Mark i, 9: ¢BarrioOn 
eis Tov lopddvnv). The essential thing is to know whether it is 
required by the context. Now when St Paul speaks of 
baptism in Christ, he seems Clearly to be considering the 
mystical Christ as a sort of divine element, a supernatural 
atmosphere, into which we must be plunged. Indeed: (a) In 
Rom. vi, 3, the consequence of baptism in Christ is that we 
are buried with him by baptism [which is] in his death, and 
that we are cvuduro: with him. Sanday is therefore right to 
paraphrase thus: “ The act of baptism was an act of incor- 
poration into Christ.” Meyer-Weiss says the same thing with 
less conciseness and more realism. Col. ll, 12 (consepulti ea 
in baptismo) is explained well only by this hypothesis ; for 
the rite of immersion accounts very well for being “ buried in 
baptism,” but why “ buried with him,” if we are not 
“immersed in him ”?—() In Gal. ili, 27, 28, baptism in Christ 


DETACHED NOTES 463 


(don eis Xpiotdv Barrio Ayre) has two results: the first is to 
clothe us with Christ (Xpurrdv eveddoacGe) ; the second is to 
unify us in Christ (ravres tpeis els eore év Xpurt ’Inoot). But 
all this is intelligible only if Christ is considered as an element 
in which we live, or as a common form which envelops us. 
—(c) In 1 Cor. xii, 13, the same order of ideas prevails, 
although the expression is a little different (pets waves eis ev 
copa éBarticOnpev) : we have been baptized into one and the 
same mystical body because we are immersed in the same 
mystical Christ. The result is always the same—namely, to 
make of us all one and the same Christ (xii, 12: otros Kal 0 
Xpucrds). 

_ To avoid all ambiguity, let us repeat that the meaning 
indicated comes from the context and not from the verb 
Barrifey (which had become a technical term signifying “to 
administer baptism”), nor from the preposition eis (which 
could indicate a simple relation, a tendency, an end, etc. )« 
It is the context and the context only that invites us to 
retain for the word ‘to baptize” the etymological mean- 
ing of “to plunge” (to immerse). If the context changes, 
this meaning must be abandoned. 


III—To Baptize IN THE NAME oF CurisT («cs 7d dvopa) 


1. This formula has been specially studied by J. Boehmer, 
Das biblische “1m NAMEN.” Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Unter- 
suchung tiber das hebraische nya und seine griechischen Aiquiva- 
lente (im besonderen Hinblick auf den Taufbefehl, Matt. xxviil, 
19), Giessen, 1898. The author believes that the five follow- 
ing expressions are synonymous because they go back to the 
same origin and are the translation of the same nova: (a) ev 
ro dvopatt, I Cor. v, 4; Vi, II ; Eph. v, 20; Phil. ite10;, Col 
iii, 17; 2 Thess. iii, 6 (we only give the texts of St. Paul).— 
(b) eis 7d dvopa, x Cor. 1, 13, 15.—(c) 8a tov dvopatos, 1 Cor. 
i, 10.—(d) ert t@ dvdparr.—() To dvopate, The meaning of the 
formula would everywhere be “ with the power or authority 
of someone,” or ‘in the company or presence of someone.” 
For example, Matt. xxvilil, 19 would be: ‘'Make for me 
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the presence (or 
with the assistance im Beisein) of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost” (p. 75). The author, as Deissmann reproaches 
him for doing (Theol. Literaturzeitung, vol. xxi, I900, pp. 
71-74), starts from a double postulate which is not proved 
and cannot be—namely, that the formula eis 70 dvopa originated 
on the soil of Palestine, and that the five expressions enumer- 
ated above all correspond to the Hebrew ova. Brandt 
(‘Ovopa, En de doops formule in het Niewe Testament in Theol. 
Tijdschrift, Leyden, vol. xxv, 1891, pp. 565-610) had already 
shown that the equivalent of eis 7d dvoya in late Judaism 


464 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


is nw) and not ova. The expression is, in fact, found in the 
Talmud (Yebamoth, 486): “The proselyte must be bathed in 
the name of Jehovah (o»nvn nw). Moreover, although the 
difference between ev and és tends to diminish towards the 
New Testament era, the identification is far from being 
proved, and in every case it is necessary to refer to the con- 
text. Now the assertion of Bohmer (op. cit., p. 85) that the 
formula eis 7d évoua, as well as the formula éy TY Ovouate, 
always applies to the administrant of baptism and not to the 
candidate to be received into the Church, is untenable ; for, 
except in Matt. xxviii, 19, this formula is found precisely with 
a verb in the passive, where the administrant of baptism is 
neither named nor indicated (Acts viii, 16 ; XiX;*h pera Core te 
13,15). Atthe most it could apply either to the priest who 
baptizes, as the author of the new relation of the baptized 
candidate to Christ, or to the candidate himself, the subject 
of this relation. 


2. The question has been discussed in The Journal of 
Theol. Shidies by Armitage Robinson (In the Name, vol. vii, 
1906, pp. 186-202), and by Chase (The Lord’s Command to Bap- 
tize, vol, vi, 1905, pp. 481-521, and vol. Vill, 1907, pp. 161-184). 
The former maintains the equivalency of the two formulas 
év T@ Ovopare and «is rd dvoua. Here is his résumé (p. 197) : 
‘“A confession of faith in the Name was the prelude to 
baptism, the invocation of the Name was an essential part of 
the ceremony. The baptized person accepted a new Master. 
Thanks to the commission (given to the Apostles, Matt. 
XXVili, 19) to make disciples by baptizing them 7m the Name 
of the three divine Persons, the administrant of baptism acted 
with authority im this Name ; and he had the right to invoke 
tis Name: a thought which does not exclude the preceding 
one.” Chase, however, combats Robinson’s thesis with much 
erudition and logic; but, in our opinion, he weakens his 
proot by the extravagance of his conclusions : that the word 
Barrifew signifies everywhere “to immerse,” and should be 
translated in our modern languages instead of being tran- 
scribed ; in eis 73 dvopa, dvopa is synonymous with “ person,” 
and Barrifew eis 7d dvoua Xpicrov means “to immerse in the 
person of Christ”—in other words, “in Christ himself ihe die 
formula év r@ dvdpuars has the same meaning. 

W. Heitmiller, in a study remarkable for the number of 
texts and facts therein accumulated, but too systematized (Im 
Namen Jesu. Eine sprach-und-religionsgesch. Untersuchung 
zum N.T. speziell zur altchristl. Taufe, Gottingen, 1903), 
undertakes a new mode of explanation and comes to this 
conclusion (p. 127): “The expressions Bamrifew év and ért ro 
dvopats describe the operation of the baptism ; they signify 


DETACHED NOTES 465 


that the baptism is accomplished by uttering the name of 
Jesus. On the contrary, the expression Bamrife «is 7d ovopa 
expresses an (the) aim and a (the) result of the baptism ; it indi- 
cates that the baptized person becomes an appurtenance or 
property of Jesus. But the utterance of the name (of Jesus) 
is also implied in the formula P. «is 7d ovoua,”’—It is very true, 
as we shall see, that the latter phrase expresses a property 
relation; but neither formula necessarily implies the act of 
invoking or of pronouncing the name of Jesus over the re- 
cipient of the baptism. 


3. Three considerations put us on the right track: 

(A) In the New Testament era the mame was sometimes 
almost synonymous with the person ; there would therefore 
be nothing extraordinary in the equivalence of the expressions 
to baptize in (eis) Christ and to baptize in the name (cis 7d dvopa) 
of Christ. Cf. Acts i, 15; Apoc. iii, 4; xi, 13 ; Matt. x, 41-42. 
There is the same manner of speaking in the Talmud; 
cf. Lightfoot, Horae hebraicae, vol. ii, p. 118. The rabbinical 
axiom is well known: ‘His Name is He, and He is his Name,” 
in speaking of God (OW 171 NIT Nw). 'For profane examples 
see Deissmann, Bibelstudien, pp. 143-145, and Neue Bibelst., 
pp. 24-26. Noteworthy also is the equivalence of the two 
formulas “to swear to the emperor” (duéca: ets, Plutarch, 
Otho, 18) and “to swear in the name of the emperor (6pdca: 
eis 6voua, Herodian, ii, 13). 

(B) The Fathers seem to make no difference between “tO 
baptize in Christ” and “to baptize 7m the Name of Christ.” 
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., xvi, 19 (XXXIII, 945 : «ixotws 
Barri(dpeba eis rar€épa Kat els vidy Kat ets Gytov mvevdpua). So also 
St ‘Athanasius, Contra Arian., iv, 21 (XXVI, 500); Epsst. iv ad 
Serap., xii (XXVI, 653) ; St Gregory Nazianzen, Ovat., xxxiv, 17 
(XXXVI, 236) ; St Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunom., xi (XLV, 
881) ; In baptisma Christi (XLVI, 585) ; the Pseudo-Ignatius, 
Philipp. ii (ed. Funk, 106), the Apostolic Canons, 49, etc. 
Tertullian here speaks like the Greeks, Adv. Prax. 260: 
Novissime mandans ut tingerent in Patrem et Filium et Spiritum 
sanctum, nonin unum. Thus ‘‘to baptize in the Father” and 
“to baptize in the name of the Father” is all one. 

(C) The examination of the passages in which appears the 
formula eis rd évoya confirms us in this opinion. Neither 
Matt. xxviii, 19 nor Acts viii, 16 furnish any light ; but, in 
Acts xix, 5, the words ¢BarricOnoav cis 7d dvopa tov Kupiov 
"Invod seem to correspond clearly to «és si otv éBamrricOnte ; 
(Acts xix, 3): which tends to establish the equivalence of 
the two expressions. In 1 Cor. i, 13, 15 the matter is still 
clearer. The converts’ saying: “I am of Paul,” made the 
Apostle indignant. No, he said to them in substance, you 
do not belong to me; you belong only to Jesus Christ. 

Il. 30 


466 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


‘Was Paul crucified for you,” and did he redeem you with 
his own blood? (cf. Acts xx. 28). “Were you baptized in 
the name of Paul,” to become his property, his possession ? 
If the reasoning is correct, the expression «is 73 dvoxa must 
indicate a relation of appurtenance. 

To sum up: the expressions “to be baptized in (eis) 
some€one or in the name (eis 73 dvopa) of someone ” are, in 
themselves, almost Synonymous, and signify “to be, by the 
fact of baptism, consecrated, dedicated, subjected, to some- 
one, to become his subject, his slave, his property.” Yet 
when it is a question of Christ, there is reason to distinguish 
them, because the name Christ can be taken in two ways, 
either as that of the mystical Christ or that of the physical 
Christ. The expression BamriferOar eis Xpicréy is applied to 
the mystical Christ, whose baptism clothes us as with an 
element or a new form; the expression BomrriferOar eis 73 
dvopia Tov viod (Matt. XXVIil, 19) Or Tov Kupiov ’Incod (Acts viii, 16; 
XIX, 5—Xpirrod is not found anywhere—is applied to the 
physical person of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, the Head 
of the Church : the first denotes a relation of union and 
mystical identity; the second marks a relation of appur- 
tenance, subjection, and consecration. 


IV—BATH OF THE PROSELYTES AND CHRISTIAN BAPTISM 


1. Statement of the Problem.—If the controversy about the 
baptism of the proselytes still exists, it is perhaps because 
the problem is very badly stated. Two very different 
questions are usually confounded: “ Had the proselytes to 
be bathed before being admitted to participate in the rites 
and religious privileges of Judaism?” and “Had this bath 
a significance which makes it resemble Christian baptism ?” 
To the first question the reply of the historians should be 
unanimous. We may dispute about the precise meaning of 
the texts of Arrian (Dissert. Efist., ii, 9) and of the Sibylline 
Books (iv, 165: éy motanois Aovoacbe SrAov Séuas devdourev), 
although it is difficult not to see in them a clear allusion to 
the bath of the proselytes ; but the whole Jewish tradition, 
after the second century, takes this bath for granted, and it is 
not likely that the usage was introduced after the appearance 
of Christianity, In order to become a proselyte, in the strict 
sense of the word, there were necessary: (1) circumcision ; 
(2) the bath of purification (72°30) ; (3) a sacrifice. After the 
destruction of the temple, the third was no longer possible 
for anyone, and for women everything was restricted to the 
bath. The Talmud is explicit : Kerithoth, 81a ; Yebamoth, 
40a. Already the Mishna leaves no doubt about the tradi- 
tional practice. See the treatises Gerim, i, 1-2; Pesachim, 
vili, 8 (="Eduyoth, v, 2). This last text settles an interesting 


DETACHED NOTES 467 


case of conscience. It was a question whether a proselyte, 
circumcised on the 14th of Nisan, could eat the passover. 
The school of Shammai allowed it, provided that on the 
same day he had taken the required bath; the school of 
Hillel, on the contrary, compared the converted pagan to 
a man defiled by contact with a corpse. Both schools 
therefore considered the proselyte as impure; but for 
Shammai it was a minor impurity, lasting only till evening, 
provided that he had previously been purified ; for Hillel it 
was a major impurity, lasting seven days (cf. Num. xix, 11, 
12); but for both the bath of the circumcised proselytes was 
a matter of course. 


2. The Baptism of Proselytes was, therefore, a levitical purifi- 
cation, designed to put an end to the legal impurity inherent 
in the state of idolatry from which the proselyte was 
emerging. Schiirer, Geschichte‘, vol. iii, p. 185, asks in what 
this baptism differed from the Christian baptism, since in 
both cases the name was identical (nb:ay) and the rite also 
(a full bath). But he himself points out in a note an essential 
difference—namely, that the baptism of the proselytes tended 
to restore levitical purity, while Christian baptism symbolized 
moral purity [which it effected in symbolizing it]. Now, 
that the choice of the symbol was suggested by the Jewish 
practice is possible, but it is not proved. In reality, the 
symbol was suggested by the nature of things. 

See S. Krauss, Baptism in Jewish Encycl., vol. ii, 1902, 
pp. 499-500; C. Clemen, Das Evang. Christt, Leipzig, 1905, 
pp. 97-102; Isr. Levi in Revue des études jusves, vol. liii, 1907, 
pp. 59-61 ; Schiirer, Geschichte des iid. Volkes4, vol. iii, 1909, 
pp. 181-185 ; above all Edersheim, The Life and Times of 


Jesus, App. xii, vol. ii, 1901, pp. 745-747. 


3. Proselyte and Neophyte.—We often find in the Babylon 
Talmud this kind of proverb: “ The proselyte is like a new- 
born infant” (sp5 ayo wPDS wWwansw 33), Yebamoth, 224, 48), 
62a,97b. This makes us think of St. John’s Nzst guts renatus 
fuertt denuo etc. Read the entire passage (John iii, 3-10) 
and compare it with 1 Pet. i, 23; ii, 2 (stcut modo gentt 
infantes), with Titus iii, 5 (lavacrum regenerationis), and the 
expression ex Deo natus, frequently in 1 John. 

On considering it closely it will be seen that the analogy 
is fallacious, and that there is no relation between the New 
Testament and the Talmud. In the latter it is not at all 
a question of a supernatural rebirth, of a spiritual regeneration, 
but only of a new judicial state which, by virtue of a legal 
fiction, changes the former relations of the proselyte. There- 
fore the situation of the proselyte is continually compared to 
the condition of an emancipated slave. Both enter into a 


468 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


new sphere of social rights and duties. The proselyte is 
considered to have no longer parents and relations, and 
Maimonides draws from this strange doctrine the following 
consequences: “The pagan who has become a proselyte 
and the emancipated slave are like a newly born child. The 
parents whom one or the other, once had when he was a 
pagan or a slave are his parents no longer. Legally, a pagan 
may marry his own mother or his sister if they have become 
proselytes. But the wise men forbid those marriages, in - 
order that it may not be said that the proselyte descends 
from a superior state of sanctity to an inferior one, and that 
what was yesterday forbidden him is to-day allowed ” (Issure 
Biah, xiv, 13, quoted by Lightfoot; Horae hebr. on John iii, 3). 


NOTE Y—VIRTUES AND VICES 
I—Sr. Paut’s Lists 


1. Lisis of Christian Virtues 


(a) Fifteen virtues accompanying charity (1 Cor. xiii. 4-7). 

(0) Five virtues typical of the Christian: mercy, kindness, 
humility, gentleness, long-suffering (Col. iii, 12 ; Eph. iv, 2). 

(c) Nine fruits of the Spirit: charity, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence 
(Gal. v, 22-23). 

(dq) Three fruits of the light: goodness, justice, and truth 
(Eph. v, 9). sale gabe 

(e) Virtues required of a priest (1 Tim. iii, 2-6). Cf. Vol. I, 
PP. 346-348. i Se 

(f) Virtues required of a deacon (1 Tim. iii, 8-13). Cf. 
Vol. I, pp. 348-349. By ib 

(g) Special virtues recommended to Timothy : justice, 
piety, faith, charity, gentleness, peace (1 Tim. vi, 11; 
2 Tim. ii, 22). 

2. Lists of Vices and Sinners. 


(a) Fifteen works of the flesh: fornication, impurity, im- 
modesty, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discords, jealousy, 
violent anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envy, drunken- 
ness, gluttony, and other similar things (Gal. v, 19-21). 

(6) Six works of darkness : gluttony, drunkenness, lewd- 
ness, immodesty, discord, jealousy (Rom. xiii, 13). 

(c) Twenty-one pagan vices: full of injustice, wickedness, 
avarice (or sensual covetousness), malice, envy, murder, con- 
tention, fraud, malignity, tale-bearers, calumniators, impious, 
proud, haughty, boasters, inventors of evil, disobedient to 
parents, without understanding, loyalty, pity, and mercy 
(Rom. i, 29-31). 

(d@) Eleven vices unworthy of Christians: discord, jealousy, 
resentments, disputes, detractions, calumnies, boastfulness, 
disorder, impurity, fornication, immodesty (2 Cor. xii, 20-21). 

(¢) Six kinds of sinners to be avoided: fornicators, 
avaricious (or voluptuaries), idolaters, insulters, drunkards, 
thieves (1 Cor. v, II). 

(f) Ten kinds of sinners excluded from heaven: forni- 
cators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, sodomites, thieves, 
avaricious (or voluptuaries), drunkards, insulters, ravishers 
(x Cor. vi, 9-10). ; 

(g) Ten members of the old man: fornication, impurity, 
lustfulness, evil concupiscence, covetousness, anger, indigna- 
tion, malice, blasphemy, and poy! speech (Col. ili, 5-8). 

4 


470 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


(4) Fourteen kinds of sinners who need to be restrained 
by the Law: the lawless and disobedient, ungodly and 
sinners, sacrilegious and profane, murderers of fathers and 
mothers, man-slayers, fornicators, sodomites, men-stealers, 
liars, perjurers, and others like them (1 Tim. i, 9-10). 

(1) Nine sorts of unbelievers: the foolish, disobedient, led 
astray, Slaves of passion and pleasure, subject to malice and 
envy, hateful and hating one another (Titus iii, 3). 

(7) Nineteen vices of certain heretics who are lovers of 
themselves, of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, dis- 
obedient to parents, ungrateful, ungodly, without feeling, 
dishonest, slanderers, detractors, incontinent, unmerciful, 
enemies of the good (or of good people), traitors, stubborn, 
puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of 
God, hypocrites (2 Tim. iii, 2-5). 

We have said that between the vocabulary of Paul and the 
terminology of the Stoics there is neither dependence, imita- 
tion, nor even a distant analogy. On the contrary, if we 
compare the pamphlet of the Two Ways, as it is found in the 
Teaching of the Apostles (chaps. i-v), in the Epistle of Barnabas 
(chaps. xvili-xx), and in the ancient Latin version discovered 
and published by J. Schlecht (Die Apostellehre in der Liturgie 
der kath. Kirche, Freiburg-im.-B., 1901), we feel immediately 
that we are on common ground. Christian moral teaching, 
being built upon the foundation of the Old Testament, has a 
very uniform terminology. The decalogue forms its frame- 
work with its positive commandments (love of God and of 
one’s neighbour and obedience to parents), and its negative 
precepts (prohibition of idolatry, murder, sins of the flesh 
theft, lying, and evil desires). 


] 


II—THE Worps DENOTING CHARITY 


To express love and friendship the Greeks had four words, 
the different shades of whose meaning our language is power- 
tess to convey. These are durclv, orépyew, épav and dyamrav.— 
(a) PcActv is the most general term, aud includes every kind of 
love: that of persons and things which are dear (¢cAd) to us, 
the love of God and of men, the love of others and of our- 
selves, pure love and guilty love. It is the contrary of to 
hate (wueiv, €yOpaivecy) ; it is a feeling of attraction or of habit 
(giActv with the infinitive =to like).—(b) Zrépyev denotes a 
tender but not a sensual love, a tranquil feeling, equable and 
constant, dictated by one’s nature, or produced by family 
intimacy. It is the love of parents for their children and vice 
versa, the mutual love of husband and wife, the love of 
country. The word is not used in the New Testament.— 
(c) "Epav means an ardent, passionate, and most frequently a 
sexual love—a love accompanied by a violent desire which 


DETACHED NOTES 471 


presupposes its object absent or imperfectly possessed. 
Joined with ¢uA¢tv it forms a gradation: “A mild and bene- 
ficent prince,” says Dion Chrysostom, “ ought not to be simply 
loved by men, but passionately loved ” (Orat., 1: pn povov 
pireicbar im’ dvOpdrwv, dXdAQ Kai épac@ar). We find the same 
gradation in Xenophon, Hieron, xi, 11. The verb épav is not 
employed in the New Testament any more than €pws and 
€parr7s. It was a word tainted by the association of impure 
ideas. Plato had tried in vain to rehabilitate it in the 
Symposium and in the Phaedo ; it still remained none the less 
prostituted, in ordinary usage, to sensual and unnatural love. 
The authors of the New Testament replace it by ertOupetv and 
ercOupia with an unfavourable meaning. It remained under 
the ban of Christian language for the reason which Origen 
discloses in his Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles 
(Prolog., xiii, 68). The phrase of St Ignatius of Antioch: “ My 
love has been crucified ” (Roman., vii, 2: 6 éuds épws eoTatipu- 
tat), is applied to Christ only by a singular misinterpretation, 
which the reading of the context makes plain.—(d) ’Ayaréyv is 
to love with esteem and choice. The Vulgate translates it 
very well by diligere (except in 2 Pet. ii, 15, amare), while 
amare serves to express diAciv. There is, indeed, in dyardav 
an idea of choice and preference founded on esteem or duty, 
whereas $tAciv expresses rather a spontaneous feeling formed 
by natural sympathy or intimate relations. The distinction 
indicated by Aristotle is very just : dyamdv, rpoatpeio Oar, Sudxenv 
(Eth. Nicom., i, 3); 73 8€ idciaOae ayaraobat éoriv airdy Sv 
avrov (Ihetor.,i, 11). According as it is desired to make one or 
the other idea prominent, dyarav (dtligere) is stronger than 
ptreiv (amare) or vice versa. Cf. Xenophon, Comment., II, 
vii, 9 ; Cicero, Ad Famul., xiii, 47; Ad Brut.,i. Dion Cassius, 
xliv, 48, makes Antony, speaking of Czsar, say: ‘You have 
loved him as a father and cherished him as a benefactor” 
(epcAnoare aitov ws Tarépa, Kai jyamnoare ds evepyérny). Study 
also the delicate shades of meaning in John xxi, 15-17. 

If the verb dyamrav is frequently employed by secular 
writers, the noun aydrn is peculiar to the Bible. It is found 
eighteen times in the Old Testament (the deuterocanonical 
books included), ten of which occur in the Canticle of Canticles. 
It is always the translation of the Hebrew 7378. Deissmann 
(Bibelstudien, p. 80) believed that he had read it in a papyrus 
antedating the Christian era; but the reading is recognized as 
false (cf. Neue Brbelstudten, pp. 26-28), and it can no longer be 
cited except as an example of Philo (Quod Deus immut., 14, 
Mangey, vol. i, p. 283), who naturally borrows it from the 
Septuagint, and another of a commentator on Thucydides 
(ii, 51) of uncertain date. 

The two words (ayarav and dydrn) are very common in the 
New Testament, especially in St Paul and St John. There is 


472 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


no need to say how suitable they are to express the love of 
God for us, our love for God, love for our brethren, and in 
particular the Christian feeling of love for one’s enemies. 
Jesus Christ says: dyarGre rovs éxOpots tyav (Matt. v, 44; 
Luke vi, 27), for charity is free and depends upon the will ; if 
he had said : ¢uA&ire rots €xOpots tpov, he would have almost 
demanded the impossible. Yet God not only cherishes us, but 
loves with tenderness because he is our Father (dA, John 
xvi, 27), and St Paul pronounces an anathema against whoever 
does not love him who has so loved us (1 Cor. xvi, 22: i tus 
ov piret rov Kipiov 7tw avabepa). 


IlII—Str Pavuw’s ASCETICIsM 


The ascetical doctrine of St Paul would deserve a separate 
study. We have indicated some characteristics of it in an 
article entitled Un aspect de l'ascese dans St Paul (Revue 
@ascéiique et de mystique, vol. ii, 1921, pp. 3-22), and more 
briefly in the course of this work, especially in Vol. II, pp. 344- 
350. The principal passages to be considered are 1 Cor. ix, 
Phil. iii, 2 Tim. ii-iv, etc. We will add here two interesting 
texts : 


(A) 2 Cor. iv, 10. mwdvrore Semper mortificationem Jesu 

THV VEKpwoLY tm corpore nosivo circum- 

rou I. ev Tg cwpate repihéepovrTes ferentes ut et vita Jesu 

iva Kat y (wn Tov Inco mantfestetur 1n corporibus 
év TO THpate npiv PavepwOy. nostris. 

11. det yap nets of (Gvres Semper enim nos qut vivimus 
ets Oavatov rapadiddpeOa Sia ’I., in mortem tradimur prop- 
iva kat 9 (wn Tod I. davepsby ter J. 

év tT) Ovnty capkt tov. ut et vita J. mantfestetur 


4n carne nostra mortalt. 


These two verses are to be compared, for they mutually 
explain each other. The word véxpwois—the equivalent of 
the classic @avérwois—is sometimes passive, “the state of 
death” (Rom. iv, 19); but it seems to be active here, “the 
putting to death, the crucifixion.” The Apostle means that 
the suffering of Jesus is always (rdvrore), and everywhere 
(wepupepovtes) being renewed in his body. It is the quotidie 
mortor of 1 Cor. xv, 32. He alludes to his persecutions and 
sufferings— beatings with rods, scourgings, stonings, etc. 
(2 Cor. xi, 23-30)—and also doubtless to his voluntary bodily 
mortifications (1 Cor. ix, 26-27). His life, saved miraculously 
so many times (2 Cor. i, 10; 2 Tim. iii, 11; iv, 17, etc.), is 
a kind of continual miracle and a proof that Jesus, his 
supporter and liberator, lives in glory in heaven. It is thanks 
to him that he can always say: guast morientes et ecce vivirus 
(2 Cor. vi, 9). 


DETACHED NOTES 473 


(B) Gal. vi, 17. Tod Aourod De cetervo nemo 
KOTOUS 
Hot pndeis wapeyerw* mthi molestus stt ; 
eyo yap ra oriypara rob "Incod ego enim stigmata Domini Jesu 
év TE Tbpuate pov Barrdtu. tn corpore meo porto. 


In spite of the brevity of the text, the meaning is not 
doubtful. “ Henceforth (rod Aouros, imperfectly rendered by de 
cetero) let no one molest me,” nor cause me any more embarrass- 
ments by his attacks, calumnies, and hostile manceuvres, like 
those of which the Galatian Judaizers have been guilty towards 
me ; “for I bear in my body the marks of Jesus,” and those 
glorious marks show that I belong to him, and that I am his 
servant, his agent, and his apostle. The oriypara were marks 
that were inflicted with a red-hot iron: in the West on 
fugitive slaves; in the East on all slaves and sometimes on 
soldiers, to indicate their master and their chief seeity eal) 
countries on animals to make known their owners. St Paul 
refers to the Eastern usage, and he clearly alludes to the scars 
of the wounds so many times received for the name of Jesus. 
These scars are the marks of Jesus, not only because they 
liken him to his Master, but because they indicate him as the 
slave and soldier of Jesus, and have been imprinted on his 
body not indeed by Jesus himself, but for his sake. 


NOTE Z—JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 


The greatest difficulty which the study of Jewish eschatology 
presents is its almost inextricable amalgamation with messianic 
conceptions and apocalytic ideas, changeable and fleeting as 
dreams. We consider it useless to involve ourselves in this 
labyrinth, and we limit ourselves to two observations which 
can throw some light, by analogy or contrast, on the exegesis 
of the New Testament. 


I—THE DURATION OF THE MESSIANIC TIMES 


The prophets assigned to the Messiah a never-ending reign 
(Jer. xxiv, 6; xxxiii, 17-22; Ezech. xxxvii, 25 ; Joel iv (iii), 20; 
Dan. vii, 27). That is also the teaching of the oldest extra- 
canonical authors (Enoch, Ixii, 14; Sibyll., iii, 49-50, 766; 
Psalm. Salom., xvii, 4). Cf. John xii, 34: Nos audivimus 
ex lege, quia Christus manet in aeternum. Nevertheless, 
together with the thesis of the eternal reign of the Messiah, 
the idea of a temporal reign, serving as a prelude to a never- 
ending heavenly kingdom, subsequently found credence. The 
Apocalypse of Baruch, while admitting the eternal duration of 
the messianic kingdom (Ixxiii, 1), does not hesitate to say 
(xl, 3): Et ertt principatus ejus stans in saeculum, donec finiatur 
mundus corruptionis. The Fourth Book of Esdras even fixes a 
limit (xii, 34: quoadusque ventat finis, dies judicii) and a date 
(vii, 28-29: annis quadringentis. Et erit post annos hos et 
morvetur filrus meus Christus).—The rabbinical speculations are 
summed up in a passage of the Talmud of Babylon, Sanhedrin, 
966-994. The days of the Messiah are forty years according 
to Ps. xciv (xcv) 10, and according to Deut. viii, 3 com- 
pared with Ps. Ixxxix, 15; or seventy years according to 
Is, xxill, 15 ; or three generations according to Ps. Ixxi, 5; or 
four hundred years according to Ps. Ixxxix, 15 compared with 
Gen. xv, 13.—To these hypotheses the Peszgta rabbathi adds 
the following: six hundred years (with no Scriptural authority) 
or a thousand years according to Ps. lxxxix, 4 and Is. lxiii, 43 
or two thousand years according to Ps. Ixxxix, 15; or seven 
thousand years according to Is. Ixii, 5, or three hundred and 
sixty-five thousand years (one year of the days of the Lord) 
according to Is. Ixiii, 4.—All these calculations are based 
upon the principle that the messianic age of happiness must 
equal the length of the period of trial, or that a day of the 
Lord is as a thousand years.—Another tradition, which was 
to exert a great influence on the first Christian writers, is 
recorded in the Talmud of Babylon (‘Aboda Zara, ga and 
Sanhedrin, g7a-98a), and starts from a different notion. It 

474 


DETACHED NOTES 475 


makes the world last six thousand years, as the work of 
creation lasted six days: two thousand years of chaos (n\n), 
two thousand years of the law (nnyn), and two thousand years 
of the days of the Messiah (mwnn nin). Cf. Weber, Jid. 


Theol.?, 372-373, 349. 


II—TurE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 


About the time of the Christian era, did the Jews believe in 
a universal resurrection? Let us divide this period into 
three sections. 

1. The Time Preceding the Appearance of Chmnstianity.— 
The Second Book of the Machabees occupies itself solely with 
the resurrection of the just (2 Mac. vii, 9, 14, 23; Xl, 43-44 ; 
xiv, 46), and particularly of the martyrs, who seemed to have 
a special right to the resurrection (cf. Apoc. xx, 4). The 
famous passage in Daniel (xii, 2: Et multi de his qui dormiunt 
in terrae pulvere evigilabunt, alit in vitam aeternam et ali in 
opprobrium), while mentioning the resurrection of the wicked, 
can by a strict interpretation be understood as referring toa 
partial resurrection, although the idea of totality is not 
excluded. But from the moment that the principle of the 
resurrection of the wicked was admitted, there was no more 
‘reason to limit its extent. The different parts of the Book of 
Enoch contain very different conceptions. According to 
Xxli, 13, the sinners who have undergone their punishment 
here on earth will not rise from the dead; Xxv, 5 seems to 
suppose that the others will rise again to receive their punish- 
ment. As to the just, their resurrection is not doubtful. 

2. First Century of our Era.—(A) The rationalistie school, 
represented especially by the Sadducees, denied absolutely the 
resurrection and even the immortality of the soul (Josephus, 
Bell. qud., Il, viii, 14; Antiq., xviii, 1-4); but as their number 
was small, the Sadducees, in order not to shock the mass of 
the people, were obliged to conform to the language of the 
Pharisees (Josephus, loc. cit.), cf. Matt. xxii, 23 ; Mark xii, 18; 
Luke xx, 27; Acts iv, I, 2; xxii, 8.—(B) The Hellentst school, 
represented by Philo and the Fourth Book of the Machabees, 
admitted the immortality of the soul, but denied or feigned to 
ignore the resurrection of the body. According to Josephus 
(Bell., Il, viii, 11; Anttg., XVIII, i, 5) the Essenes shared this 
opinion.—(C) The orthodox school, represented by the Phari- 
sees, admitted the resurrection of the just, and even more 
generally the resurrection of all men, Jews and non-Jews, good 
and bad. Thus the Fourth Book of Esdras, vii, 32: Et terra 
veddet quae in ea dormiunt, et pulvis qui tn eo silentio habitant, 
et promptuaria reddent quae eis commendatae sunt animae. 
If the Apocalypse of Baruch, xxx, speaks only of the just, it 


476 | THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


subsequently expressly mentions the wicked (i): Restitwet 
terra tunc mortuos quos recipit nunc ut custodiat eos, nihil 
immutans in figura eorum, sed sicut recepit ita restituet eos. 
The alteration in the appearance of the resurrected good and 
wicked will be visible only after the judgement (li): Et cum 
praeterierst tlle dies statutus, immutabitur aspectus eorum qua 
damnati fuerint et gloria eorum qui justificati fuerint. Fiet 
enim aspectus eorum qui nunc impie agunt pejor quam est, ut 
sustineant supplicium, etc. (trad. Ceriani, Monumenta sacra et 
prof., Milan, vol. i, 1866, p. 86). The Testament of Benjamin, 
x, 8 (Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Oxford, 
1908, p. 229), is still more explicit: xal of rdvres avaoTHoovrTas, 
ot pev eis Sogav, of 8 eis dripiav (Armenian: Tére mdvres ddXa- 
ynvopeba, ot pev eis Sdav, of SE eis aripiav, cf. I Cor. XV, SI-52), 
But it is necessary always to discount the chances of Christian 
interpolation. 

3. Rabbinical Judaism.— The primitive opinion, which 
remained traditional, is that the dead will rise again at the 
end of time for judgement. Towards the end of the second 
century of our era, it seems, a dissenting school.conceived of 
a resurrection of the just to enjoy the messianic kingdom on 
earth; but this school did not succeed in becoming dominant. 
More and more, the resurrection was made the counterpart of 
the creation. This presupposes a universal resurrection in 
conformity with Dan. xii, 2, although naturally the resurrec- 
tion of the just formed the principal subject of thought. 
Cf. Lagrange, Le Messianisme, pp. 122-131 and 176-185. 
Consult also: F. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den 
Vorstell. des alten Israels und des Judentums, 1892; A. Bertholet, 
Die tsrael. V orstellungen vom Zustand nach dem Tode, Freiburg- 
im-B., 1899; R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of 
Future Life in Israel, in Judaism and in Christianity, London, 
1899; P. Volz, Jidische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Aqiba, 
Tubingen, 1903. 


Se ee ee 
WwW 
i 


@ NAMONNN 


> 
> 


10) 1.37; 
14, 1. 2-3. 
18, 1. 24. 
18, 1. 47. 
20,1521. 
20, 1. 22. 
74 EA) 
elle 
23, 1.8. 
24, 1. 43. 
27, 1.4; 
30, 1. 14. 
Sle: 
32, 1.8; 


42, 1. 10. 
42, 1. 38. 
44,1. 24. 


46, 1. 29. 


47, n., 1. 16. 
Ain, le 7. 


49, 1.6. 
49,1. 7. 
49, 1.15. 


Sia teas 
53.0 13. 
54, 1. 2. 


S50) 

SR ene2s lke 
6581) 2. 

65, 1. 48. 
FOO le 
Peay & 
7A nee: 
79, 1. 6. 

82, 1. 16. 
87, 1. 19. 
88, 1. 20. 
89,1. 8. 
O31914: 
OF 2ole 7. 
25s 1.3. 


ibid. 
104, 1. 37. 
106, n. 1, 1. 2. 


APPENDIX 


These alternatives in the translation have been recommended to us as a result 
of an examination of the latest amended French edition and have the support of 
very high authority. (The references are to page and line number.) 


VOLUME I 


adds to analysis synthesis 

thought. Its 

theology. It 

theology; and it 

by a special command 

overflow into questions 

falsely critical 

to delay acknowledging 

of which the Church of Ephesus was 
the mother 

Adolf Harnack. But then we used to 
think that he placed the sacred rights 
of history above the petty prejudices of 
national infatuation. The only question. 


the events 

But figures . . . and his technical 
was constrained to render 

ultimate designs 

accommodating 

to a fact or to an analogous case 

its design is changed 

and that this 

participle 

sacrifices 

on the authority of documents 
neither possible nor 

quality 

the fact of the Eucharist and the 
manner of its institution 

proofs 

Nevertheless 

two in Lycaonia 
admirably suited . . . offered himself 
si (si 

Whatever their authority might be 
elsewhere 

amplified greatly 

proclaimed with equal power 

from marriage with blood-relatives, 
which were forbidden 

before all 

had assumed at that time 

the teaching of Christian doctrine in 
the true sense 

unorthodox 

have feelings 

such a letter 

Moreover 

and the phrases 

reveal 

SApaLVae 

Ecce, veniam 

command to preach the Gospel 

for a short time 

incorrectness, full of 

grievious palliations of wrongdoing 
the peculiar business 

contiguity of 

what are rightly called nature’s laws 


and it is certain that 


will be 
Ilepi 5€ ’Amoddud 


477 


adds analysis to synthesis 
thought; but its 
theology ; it 
theology. It 
by a special circumstanice 
overflow with questions 
pseudo-critical 
to waste one’s time at 
of which province Ephesus was the 
metropolis 
the learned Professor Adolf von Har- 
nack who, from 1908 until his death 
(June 1930), has strongly claimed for 
St. Luke the paternity of the Gospel 
and of the Acts. 
A question 
the voyages 
Figures .. . but his technical 
would later on render 
the last things 
accommodated sense 
to an analogous fact or case 
it is purposely changed 
and this 
particle 
concessions 
as documents 
either impossible, or not 
turn 
the fact and the manner of institution 
of the Eucharist 
proofs from the Scriptures 
Meanwhile 
two in Phrygian Pisidia (Antioch and 
Iconium), two in Lycaonia 
at all events admirably suited .. . yet 
offered himself 
whether (si 
Whatever, moreover, their authority 
might be 
fully supported 
implicitly proclaimed 
from such marriages with blood-rela- 
tives as were forbidden 
“to the face” 
in that case assumed 
the catechesis in the proper sense 


orthodox 

are passible 

many a letter 

Hence 

therefore the phrases 

set off 

Sap save aloe Darvas 

Etiam venio 

decree to have the Gospel preached 
later on 

incorrectness, or his discourses full of 
regrettable attenuations 

the gift proper to 

comparison with 

the precepts,.properly so called, of the 
law of nature 

and, of course, 

were 

Ilept 3€ rs Aoylas .xvi, 12: Tepl dé 
*Aroh\Aw 


148, 
148, 
155: 
154, 
155s 
167, 
168, 
T7is 
17S) 
174, 
174, 


Whey ds ible 
176, 1. 25. 
76s e275 
178, 1. 9. 
Viol ey 
178, 1. 14. 
180, 1. 33. 
IRS cl Sto), 
184, 1. 4. 
184, 1.5. 
184, 1. 6. 
184, 1. 
191, 1. 
191, 1. 
LOZ 
193, 1. 
ibid. 
193, 1. 29, 
ibid. 
LOSens2. ls 
105" nel |: 
196, n. 2, 1. 
198, 1. 
199\ n. 
201, 1. 
209, 1. 
PANG le Als 
PB BYR. 

ZlSe le25e 

ae ak wb. 

ZUDe 11k Oya 
PVE Se ah 

PAVE MN li, 

Palen abe de? 

PA by Sill Je 
220, 1. 9. 

Zeer ee 


pe pe 
By 
— 


NNW bo" 


a 


Simic! ee ee 
Cote GON 
te 


wp 


_ 
me. 
— 


2 
8. 
10. 
aif 
Pl ae wes 
2h 

19; 


THE THEG@LOGY?+ OF 


comes straight to the point 
counsel, however, when 


while unable 

and, if not there, it is shown in 

must not be 

takes into account only 

either part 

Objection has been unjustly made to 
an application of the Pauline privilege 
does not make good 

allows it to continue 

the imminent danger of scandal 

the power of rule 

which is usually followed 

the poison of serpents 

Moreover, the gifts 

sanctifying grace 

Paul’s testimony 

profoundly mysterious 

changed in place 

difficulties, but it is of less moment 
than the = 

outbreak 

among 

sufficient to think anything of our- 
selves, as of ourselves 

excellency 

of the power of God 

place 

“You would bear” or “ You bear 

I have done nothing less 

even cut off, who trouble you 

is Christ then... of sin? 

Moreover 

arrangement 

involuntarily 

Rom. iii, 25; xi, 20; 1 Cor. i, 24) 


even if 

essentially 

he is justified only by 
admitting that 

due to 

obtain it 

which is 

cannot himself love evil 
occasions 
overlooking 

being 

intermediary 

a fundamental thesis 
God’s salvation 
strictly speaking 
foretold by 

and by the signs 
and especially by 
was 

Chis 2. God: 

all probability 

the word qui twice 

bearing witness to them 

bearing witness 

elements 

restored 

a queen but a suzerain 

every sin is not 

concludes . . . completes 

heaping up 

nevertheless 

one sin of a nature © 

it is explained still less by the fact that 
Finally 

no more couples 

Also 


grace 


5. PAUL 


restores just proportions 

counsel which, however, sounds like an 
order, when 

without our being able 

and, in the opposite case, in 

is not 

addresses himself only to 

the latter 

It is by error that an application of 
the Pauline privilege has been found 
is not yet a case of 

leaves it in force 

the scandal and of the imminent danger 
the power of order 

but which it more often followed 
venom and poison 

The gifts, therefore, 

the grace of one’s state 

the witnesses accumulated by St. Paul 
radical 
transferred 
difficulties. It depends on the 

leaven of discord and revolt 

with 

cf ourselves sufficient to think 
anything as [coming] from ourselves 
immeasurable value 

of God 

circumstances 

“You did bear” or even “ You do bear 
in nothing I am less 

mutilated, who agitate and trouble you 
then Christ would be... of sin. 
Elsewhere 

disposition 

spontaneously 

wioret (Rom, iii, 28; xi, 20; 2 Cor. i, 
24) 

although 

virtually 

(he is not Justified) except by 
supposing such a justification 
belonging to the sphere of 

obtain it, so to speak, 

which are 

cannot love evil itself 

stages 

passing over 

over 

intermezzo , 

a thesis, although a fundamental one 
of salvation in God’s intention 

in all strictness 

foretold both by 

and by the indications 

especially of 

remained 

Lie Gods 

any hypothesis 

the last two qui 

also bearing witness 

also bearing witness 

stages 

transferred 

a queen also but subordinately 

not every sin is 

conclude . . . complete 

excess 

. however, 

a sin of nature 

it can be explained still less since 

To sum up 

and two couples 

Hence 

gratuity 


Dees ts37. 

223. no2, 12-3. 
a4 21-22: 
AAS Bae 

Bese lize: 

225 2 1a l8. < 
226, 1. 42. 
228) bei. 
230,.],, 1: 
230, 1. 22. 
2oaetel 5: 
Zon. ia I, 
258) 15 115 
238, n. 2, 1. 
240, 1.14. 
242, 1. 10. 
PAP ISS: 
242, 1. 30. 
243-1, 27. 
243, 1730. 
244 on, 1515. 
245, 1. 29. 
246, 1. 
246, 1. < 
246, 1. 
247, 1. 


i) 


247, 1. 
248, 1. : 
249, 1. 
25071 
250% 1 
25st 132. 
25een. 2, 1.17. 
Zerit 0: 
255i 19; 
B56 sIGL sy: 
257 [a4 

257. 1a GO: 

PAY isa Wer4 oy 
258 alaoe 
ZoleeZle 


Zoe les 
263, 1. 10. 


to 
an 
ie 
= 

bo 


280, I. 
280, 1. 28. 
280, 1. 29. 


280, 1. 34. 
op baba is: 


2olele oo 
282, 1. 20. 
283, 1. 8. 
2RA eine Wes. 
do ta Daan 
2oseleis: 
289 ih. 
PANG ei lets Hots 
294, 1. 33. 
294, 1. 36. 
ZOR sine: 
205 sat lease 
207 1532) 
298. n. 2, 1. 19. 
299, 1. 3. 


1. 26. 


APPENDIX 


a part of him as another self 


adda . . , pAoWwpare 
emt: ters elie 
above all 

it 


is subject to 

of a woman 

no longer 

because 

all the force it now possesses 
acting through 

etc., the 

invoke 

submits 

God that justifieth 
arrangements for . . 
arrangements 
modifying 

in that 
construction» 
explains this conformity exactly 
an aorist either gnomic or habitual 
for us. 

lie 

proof 

whom God foresees destined to 
believe 

erroneously extended 
misunderstood 

cannot 

It is asserted 

with 

contrasts 

modify 

and blinded him 

Also the hardening 

drew its moral 

sin; 

Moreover 

his anger”; from now on he is 
enemy 

it is best to postpone the question 


. arrangements 


the context and consultation 

persisted obstinately in their attitude to 
individualism 

remove 

can we not here adore 

some individuals excepted 


circumcision 

without the 

foreseen the possibility 

given as quite an ordinary occurrence. 
determined 

and, finally, the description 

There are also in the portions 
peculiar to each 

restored if lost 

One after another these 
have been called 

Christ 

very use according 

based upon 

no account is taken of the fact 
in a word Docetism 

belongs especially to him 
named 

very efficacious 

Also 

nourishment 

perfectly 

is fulfilled 

Moreover 

to 

It is in vain that . .. plenitude; 


sectarians 


479 


a part of himself, another Christ 
"adda . . , Opowpare 

ite xcahite esit 

still less 

he 

enslaves 

of the woman 

neither 

that 

all its force 

correlative to 

etc. The 

call for 

submitted 

It is God that justifieth 
dispositions regarding . . . dispositions 
dispositions 

attenuating 

especially because 

member 

precisely explains this conformity 
a gnomic or habitual aorist 

for us? 

still continue 

testimony 

who God foresees will believe 


misunderstood 

overlooked 

may not 

It is now a certainty 

among 

contracts 

attenuate 

and he blinded him 

The hardening, therefore, 

drew the moral 

sin, 

Hence 

his anger” from now on, he is 
opponent 

it is therefore possible to restate 
the question 

the context, the consultation 
run against 

particularism 

transfer 

can we here not adore 

leaving aside the question of 
individuals 

mutilation 

except in the case of 

foreseen as a quite ordinary occurrence 
given. 

determinate 

and the final description 

Yet, even in the portions peculiar to 
each, there are 

reconstructed 

These sectarians have successively 
been called 

that of Christ 

very use. [Yes, but only] according 
blended into 

it does not make us realize 

and finally Docetism 

belongs to him 

set up as 

hardly apparent 

Hence 

influx 

frequently 

completes himself 

Elsewhere again 


in 
Although . . . plentitude, 


480 


299, 1. 16. 
299, 1. 30. 
300, 1. 34. 
302, 1. 36. 
DOS p lacs 
BOS teas: 
306, n., 1. 17. 
306, n., 1. 18. 
ibid. 

306, n., 1. 39. 
SU srt le20. 


308, 1. 35. 
313, 1. 26. 


314, 1.1. 


314, 1. 6. 
315,11. 12. 
314, 1.14. 


314, 1.17. 
314, 1, 29. 
318, 1.11. 


Soe 
337,,1529: 
S37 ea. 
339, 1. 10. 
340, 1. 9. 
342, n. 4, 1.5. 
343, 1. 6. 
345, 1. 14. 
S47 oS: 
Seb ie ae 2 
se 2 
Sel sie 4, WBE 
358, 1. 48. 
SOO meee 
Stone 
361, 1. 28. 
SOlenioe lc. 
362,122. 
364, 1.19. 
309) leo 
368, 1. 6. 

SYA ILE 
S750 29: 
375) 125 
SYRIA KIS) 


THE THEOLOGY + OF 


union 

face to face with 
incomprehensible 
is fulfilled 

Also 

is fulfilled 
similarly 
similarly 

than on mpés 

its 

supplying through every contact 


also 

The other . . . language, almost to 
the point of enthusiasm. 

with the incarnation, logically occurs 
after it in point of time 

It would not, therefore, be 

voluntatis notionalis (purely personal) 
distinctively personal (hypostatic) 
function 

a mind like that which was 


calls his glorious exaltation a recom- 
pense 

at least, those 

is its crown 

In this text again 

strongly maintained 

had not himself been able to empty 
himself 

ego, and 

could 

Resemblances 

take for granted already 

the paternity 

used it to designate 

strictly speaking 

and 

specious in a different way 

choice 

evidently hold an intermediate position 


belongs rightly to 

by the Father and the Son without 
distinction 

Paul does not commonly 
It is expedient 

doubtful 

from 

he does 

observe 

by 

animals 

or of 

Gentile 

Gentile 

After having sent 

retires from the clergy 
This 

were employed 

serious in another way 
would 

doubtfully 

As for the rest 

served him as an archetype 
and definitely 

shared again 

civilization 

introduction 

the lightning and the tempest also 
and the founder 

to hold fellowship with his co-heirs 
on a large scale 

to him 


SORA 


total 

quite naturally to 

entirely misunderstood 

completes himself 

Hence 

completes himself 

both equally 

both equally 

than pos 

his 

by every contact with the supplying 
centre 

hence 

Excepting the enthusiasm, the other 
... language. 

with the incarnation in point of time, 
logically occurs after it 
It would not be 

of the notional will 
hypostatic. function . 

an attitude of mind conformable to 
what took place 

calls for his glorious exaltation as a 
recompense 

at least those 

which it crowns 

In this text, however, 

maintains, it is true, 

could not have emptied himself 


ego; 
might 

Probabilities 

already suppose 

the Pauline paternity 

thought of reserving it for designating 
for all that 

but 

much more specious 

argument 

hold a position which is about 
intermediate 

is peculiar to 
without distinction 
Father or by the Son 
Paul, as usual, does not 

We should 

obscure 

in 

we do 

compare . 
upon 

creatures 

of 

Hellenist 

Hellenist 

Having summoned 

foregoes the clerical state 

It . 

had business 

much more serious 

did 

unspecified 

Besides 

served as an archetype for the former 
and, in fine, 

still shared 

worship 

blending 

hence the lightning and the tempest 
or the founder 

to associate co-heirs with himself 
roughly 

in his case 


either by the 


379, 1. 8. 


379, 1. 9. 
BIO Noes. 
os, 1. 5: 
381, 1. 28. 
SSL, 11,1. 10: 
382, 1. 14. 
382, 1. 28. 
382, 1. 30. 
O80, 4. LZ; 
386, 1. 3. 
386, 1. 26. 
387, n. 4, 1.8. 
389, 1. 35. 
393, 1. 32. 
395, 1.8. 
405, 1. 36. 
406, 1. 7. 


406, 1. 12. 
406, 1.15. 
408, 1. 15. 
410, after 1. 43. 


APPENDIX 


make prominent either the oblation 
(the Eucharist) which 

or the victim who 

Gospel 

the infinite value 

above ali 

and to 

It is not necessary to 

being a priest by their consent 
being only 

in almost identical words 
revocable blemishes 

its 

which is found elsewhere 

to be refuted 

This rest of God is Jesus 
author (or chief) 

import 

this he expresses quite clearly else- 
where 

Philippi 

plundered wealth 

some time 


481 


emphasize either the oblation which 


or the victim which 

Epistle 

the infinite value, of that sacrifice 
pre-eminently 

and with 

It is necessary not to 

according to them, being a priest 
only 

, though not in as many words 
irremediable defects 

their 

which, however, is found 

for refuting 

This rest of God, it is Jesus 
chief 

license 

this, moreover, he expresses clearly 
enough 

Philip 

inheritance 

a fairly long time 


The most recent and most complete work on the chronology of St. Paul is 
Plooij. De Chronologie van het leven van Paulus, Leiden, 1919. (A good sum- 


mary by Jones in the Expositor, May, June, August, 1919.) 


The author puts 


the conversion of St. Paul in the year 30-31, his second visit to Jerusalem in 
45-46, the assembly of the Apostles in 48, Paul’s arrival at Corinth at the 


beginning of 50, the captivity in 57. 
the captivity—Spring, 62. 

it is true, with the variations 
modification, cited from 
danger to one’s neighbour 
eagerly sought for 

the prisoners, or the sick 
dialect 

one who 

through 

everything: “Qore 


foreknowledge, which is something that 


or of having it in mind 
favour 

things to be done 

elsewhere 

whatever 

admittedly the way in which 


are precisely those 

like the 

predecessors 

Also 

After 

returns 

to Jacob 

to see 

justice 

so little is understood 
originates in 

was, even in his eyes, 
Finally 

usual commentary 
commentary 

Finally 

mean 

it is surprising that the Fathers did 
not think of it. Also it is 
in exchange for 

depends 

union of 

acquired by the Church after 
These letters 

does not hesitate to write 
systematic 


He stops, as does the Acts, at the end of 


with, it is true, variations 
modification of 

proximate danger 

readily assumed 


* whether in prison or sick 


slang 

that which 

with reference to 

everything; for he foresees the free 
acts, but does not predestine them: 
"“Oore 


foreknowledge that which 


or of placing it before one’s mind 
initiative 

the order of execution 
everywhere else 


notwithstanding 

the way in which, in order to avoid 
misunderstanding, 

happen to be among those 
as 

as predecessors 

Hence 

As early as 

refers 

of Jacob 

to show 

truth 


there is so little agreement 

is proved already by 

was, in his eyes, even 

To sum up 

Glossa ordinaria 

Glossa 

To sum up 

belong to 

it would be surprising if the Fathers 
had not thought of it. In fact, it is 
for 

could depend 

agreement in 

existing already at 

At that date, these letters 

writes nevertheless 

repeated 








482 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 
470, 1. 26. received readings meanings 
471, 1. 20. etymology vocabulary 
AfZatas: admirably well 
475. Ne tel he can be ranked indiscriminately he cannot be ranked without reserve 
479, 1.15. Gospel Epistle 
492, 1. 41. injustice than to do that. injustice. 
492, 1. 42. such a fault it 
493, 1, 38. the party one 
SOTRIEZS: willingly find their preaching doubtful find purposeful obscurity in their 
preaching 
S001 37. schoolmaster pedagogue 
508, 1. 24. by to 
517, 1. 6. losing the faith violating their sworn faith 
SOO tae the husband of one wife married only once 
Omissions : 
AMM dk B84, enough conscience among the heathen among the heathen a degree of ignor- 
to ance sufficient to 
205ene I to: tackle crew 
299, 1. 10. who is wholly completed who completes himself wholly 
Gin 1 gL 2A Resemblances Probabilities 
VOLUME II 
4, 1. 26. It always happens It still remains 
4,1. 34. and the revelation , according to the revelation 
4,1. 36. manifest to all nations manifest, [and] is made known to all 
nations 
Detaled kaTa in both cases the two kara 
Settles Jil in both cases xara is subordinate the second «ard is subordinate to the 
first one 
19MeA hatert : If 
19, n., 1. 21. translated rendered 
20, 1. 44. in the work of in its relation to 
2ooneds ll: And what would fit in with such And what would be the meaning of 
forgetfulness ? that “ divesting ” ? 
Bons 72 reflecting refuting 
28, 1. 38. make known confirm 
29, n., 1.6 anticipates would lead us to expect 
29 7 by changing , although he changes 
le leZose7: Of the doctrine . . . and imposition The doctrine... and of imposition 
Of the resurrection  - Of resurrection 
S2aled A variation of the original A variant of the original text 
reading 
32, 1.8 version reading 
OZan lee he it 
SHO Ne, subject motive 
34,1. 35. from of 
S/eipel ela oe this fine judgment concerning the final exposition of 
39, 1. 34. written dialogues dialogues 
41, 1. 38. in a mystery [which refers] to the mystery 
42, n., last 1 erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinth- 
er,” Leipzig, 1910 (Collection Zahn). 
49, 1.17 ie more decisive is his language different is his language from 
than 
50, 1. 24 for the biblical déyos signifying the for, since the biblical Adyos signifies 
word and not reason (vovs) , the word and not reason, the vous, 
Se Ae abstracted by the body. from which the body abstracts. 
SAS food meat 
Bye WH his playful use the interplay 
Sve 2A disputable indisputable 
Osa Lis uses the commonly received vocabu- uses without comment the commonly 
lary of that time on this subject, with- received vocabulary of that time on 
oe appreciating its full significance, this subject, for ie 
OL ee 
Pola 5: of the two modes of action in both cases 
FomnOe more for good than for evil. more, for good as well as for evil. 
85) 17. while taking part in it passively: 
OZ title, to negotiate for capital sums to treat per summa capita 
93, 1. 18. restrict Paul’s thought _ still more come nearer to Paul’s thought 
Seles l= sometimes approached is sometimes compared with 
99, 1. 25. perspective prospect 
106, 1. 17. use, according use. [Yes, but only] according 


APPENDIX 


extreme 

his Palestinian associates 

to the heart 

zealots 

Christians do not consciously 
naturally is 

Intervenmg in the Working of 
appropriate sphere 

as belonging to him 

in the discharge of their eternal rela- 
tions or missions 

it 

physical 

occasion 

since it is elsewhere asserted 

St. Paul’s verbal quotation from St. 
Luke 

by his theandric nature, he associates 
them in an indissoluble union. 


483 


arbitrary 

the Palestinian milieu 

in the bosom 

satellites 

Christian sentiment does not 

is superfluous when applied to 

Their Intervention according to 
sphere of appropriation 

by appropriation 

in connection with their eternal rela- 
tions or with the missions 

him 

psychical 

need 

since, on the other hand, it is asserted 
in St. Paul textually the same passage 
as in St. Luke 

by his theandric unity, he associates 
them in an indissoluble bond. 


N.B. This last formula “his theandric nature” is directly heretical. 


ZELLER. 
228an.,. 1719: 


241, 1. 10. 
v0 8g ei 
245, 1. 46. 
254, 1. 27. 


254, 1. 33. 
Pasta eal Bal bere 
DASE, OSY 
2Ole lal 23. 
266, 1. 36. 
269, 1.6. 
ALLS 


erly id 10, 
er lade: 
orks. 
biogle 19. 


213, loos. 


275,04 he. 
278, 1. 7. 
280, 1. 32. 
282, 1. 26. 


290, n., 1. 19. 
291, 1.1 
291 TalZ, 
291, 1.26. 
206, LZ. 
296, 1. 3. 
298; 1. 27. 
300, 1. 20. 


302, 1. 38. 
304, 1. 16. 
305, 1. 28. 


because 

deceived in them 

two extreme differences 

question 

sentient 

is not applicable 

In the times when ideas of purchase, 
price, and ransom were operative 

the priest who sacrifices it 

between the justice and the love of 
God on one side and between his anger 
and mercy on the other 

punishment of the damned 

tortures of the damned 

cause 

regained. All 

we shall show elsewhere 


In cases where the twofold object 
is clearly 

are called by the same name 

to baptism are 


from them 

after the time of St. Justin 

rightly belongs 

effective (ter ) 

does not mention it until 

a sacred function of a similar nature 
which no one had the right to call 
into being or revive. 

grace of a calling 

graces of condition 

acts, of course, 

argues well, in presenting this hypo- 
thesis 

can indeed be a sing, yet for all that 
may not be 

suckers and shoots 

maintain 

into one single national body 

with the apostles. It is 


the two 

partly hypostatic 

ordinary grace 

with human nature 

Jesus 

Christ 

planted together 

In this case it happens to be a state- 
ment concerning 

without going clearly 

on a level with 

clubs of revellers and social circles 


that 

mistaken 

two differences in addition 

quotation 

material 

is applicable 

As soon as the ideas of purchase, 
price, and ransom were made use of 
the one who offers it 

between the justice and the love of 
God, between his anger and his mercy 


pain of loss 

pain of loss 

effect 

regained—all 

we show elsewhere (See p. 169, Note 
8) 

If the twofold object 

were clearly 

call for 

to baptism and; by concomitance, to 
confirmation, are 

from that fact 

from St. Justin on 

belongs by appropriation 

affective 

mentions it only 

a function of a sacred nature 

to revive or to-call which into being 
belongs to nobody. 

grace of one’s state 

graces of one’s state 

is, of course, assumed 

really argues on this supposition 


could indeed be a sign, without, how- 
ever being 

cuttings and layers 

see 

into the body of one single nation 
with the apostles. But the exegete 
does not hesitate. It is 

that we 

quasi-hypostatic 

habitual grace 

with the divine Nature 

Jesus 

Christ 

grafted into him 

In fact, there is an accidental men- 
tion of 

without, of course, going 

besides 

corporations such as the Eranists and 
Thiasites 


THE THEOLOGY OF 


ever 
desires 

as well as 

preferably gives to his disciple 

of sin 

but 

is his word. of command and counter- 
sign. 

really belong to it 

This is the shortest and most efficaci- 
ous example of his teachings. 

had wounded 

Manichaean 

Gospel, but, as 

baptism, actual or desired, is neces- 
sarily the only means 

On the one hand 

incomparable glory 

from this fact it appears 

has 

doctrine and usually 

Greek word, untranslatable in French. 
reading has . 

punishment of the lost 

The significant and most interesting 
evolution of the word sacramentum is 


a purely imaginative one 

and a relation of dependence of the 
latter on the former, if 

and of 

words and other 

and (g) the stereotyped form— 
predicate 

need to be investigated in order to 
know if they express 

absent in body 

reconcilable moreover with the first, 
although admittedly 

principalities, cherubim 

The Significant Evolution of the Word 
OTOLKELOV 

shaft 

the gnomon 

from a usage common 

The alphabetical meaning 

Under the influence of astrology a 
new meaning was subsequently giver 
a place of great honour 

who relates, according to Hippobotos 


to the heart of divinity 

both 

contrast 

usual Gloss 

the Lord the Spirit 

common Gloss 

reach 

usual Gloss 

made use of 

to them 

positive idea of right 
designate the Greek 

although it takes for granted 
its 

with greater reason 

a little later 

proved 

slanderers, detractors, incontinent 
tender 

has the remarkable faculty of ex- 
plaining 

These form the vicissitudes 


of the parousia, which Beyschlag . . . 
as the plan of redemption in action. 


SL PAUL 


in those churches 

denies 

—because 

gives to his disciple of predilection 
to sin 3 
and yet 

are his watchword and his orders. 


are peculiar to him 

Example is the shortest and most 
efficacious teaching. 

would wound 

dualistic 

Gospel; as 

baptism alone, actual or desired, is 
necessary with a necessity of means 
On the other hand 

different degrees of glory 

is proved by this fact 

which has 

doctrine, usually 

untranslatable Greek word. 

reading 'exdvoduevoe has 

pain of loss 

The evolution of the meaning of the 
word sacramentum is most interesting 
and is 

pure imagination 

and the relation of dependence, if 


of 

words, and of other 

and (g)—the stereotyped form 
predication 

need some further qualification in 
order to express 

absent in the flesh 

reconcilable, however, with the first, 
if it be taken as : 
principalities, powers, cherybim 

The Evolution of the Meaning of 
oToLX ELov : 

pointer 

the pointer of a gnomon 

and commonly used 

The meaning “ alphabet ” 

A new meaning was subsequently 
added under the influence of astrology, 
which was in great honour 

who, on the authority of Hippobotos, 
relates 

in the bosom of the divinity 

all 

opposition 

Glossa ordinaria 

the Spirit Lord 

Glossa ordinaria 

admit 

Glossa ordinaria 

could have made use of 

to some authors 

positive right 

designate, as do the Greek 

but presupposes 

their 

still more readily 

a little toe late 

an accomplished fact 

slanderers, incontinent 

sensuous 

by a stroke of genius explains 


Beyschlag invites us to contemplate 
the vicissitudes 

of the parousia. 

from the poirt of view of the redemp- 
tive act. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


F'aR from seeking to lengthen this bibliography, we have made 
special efforts to abbreviate it. The mere enumeration of all 
that has been written on St Paul, from the third century to 
our own day, would fill a large volume. Such a list would, 
moreover, be of little interest and moderate utility, the greater 
part of these works being of no intrinsic value and having justly 
fallen into oblivion. We exclude from our lists six sorts of 
works. 

1. All authors previous to the nineteenth century, because they 
are thought to be known to the reader, in case they are of any 
real value. 

2. All ancient and modern commentaries, because they are 
enumerated, and generally with a short estimate of them, in all 
Introductions to the New Testament. 

3. All the great compilations or anonymous collections, like 
dictionaries of the Bible, encyclopedias, etc. 

4. Almost all articles in reviews, as well as most of the theses 
given for baccalaureate and licentiate degrees. M. U. Chevalier, 
in his Bio-bibliographie® (1907, vol. ii, cols. 3515-3535), gives a 
sufficiently long list of them. 

5. The Lives of St Paul and the Histories of the apostolic 
age, although several of these works treat of history and 
theology at the same time. 

6. Finally, with few exceptions, the studies of topography 
and chronology and researches into the composition, moral 
condition and vicissitudes of the Pauline churches. 

The names of Catholic authors, unhappily still too rare, 
are marked by an asterisk. 


I—THEOLOGIES OF ST PAUL 


I. PERIOD OF THE FIRST ATTEMPTS 


We mention merely for remembrance those works which are 
already forgotten, and for the most part not without reason. 


G. W. Meyer: Entwicklung des paulin. Lehrbegriffes, Altona, 
18ol. 

*J. B. Gerhauser: Character und Theologie des Ap. Paulus 

: aus seinen Reden und Briefen, Landshut, 1816. 

L. Usteri: Entwicklung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffes, in 
seinem Verhalinisse zur bibl. Dogmatsk, Zurich, 1824 
(6° ed., 1851). 

485 


486 THE THEOLOGY MOR ts TEA UL 


K. Schrader: Die Lehre des Ap. Paulus, Leipzig, 1833. 

Dahne: Entwicklung des paulin. Lehrbegriffes, Halle, 1835. 

Litzelberger: Grundzuge der paulin. Glaubenslehre, Nurem- 
berg, 1839. 

Lutterbeck: Die neutestam. Lehrbegriffe oder Untersuchungen 
uber das Zettalter der Religionswende, Mainz, 1852. 

E. Reuss: Histoire de la théologte chrétienne au siécle apostolique, 
Strasbourg, 1852, 3° édit., 1864. 

Hahn: Die Theologie des N.T., Leipzig, 1854. 

H. Messner: Die Lehre der Apostel, Leipzig, 1856. 

Schmid: Bibl. Theologie des N.T.* (ed. Weizacker), Stuttgart, 
1863. 

F.C. Baur: Vorlesungen iiber neutestam. Theologie, Leipzig, 1864. 

J. J. van Oosterzee: De Theologie des Nieuwen Verbonds, 1867 
(2%ed7) 1872). . : 

Opitz: Das System des Paulus nach seinen Briefen, Gotha, 1874. 

A. Immer: Theologie des N.T., Berne, 1877. 

*H. T. Simar: Die Theologie des heil. Paulus*, Freiburg-im-B., 
1883 (1st ed., 1864). 


The first two essays are only humble and timid outlines: 
but the work of Usteri was epoch-making. Usteri was the 
first to reduce St Paul’s theology to a system. He conceived 
it as a sort of philosophy of history, including the times of 
ignorance and the fulness of times, with the advent of Christ 
at the point of their intersection. The plan is thus unfolded: 

Part I—Paganism and Judaism.—(1) Men gradually lose the 
knowledge of God and fall little by little into a general state of 
sin. (2) Relation between the sins of all men and the sin of 
the first man. (3) Relation of sin and death to the Mosaic 
Law. (4) Relation of the Lawtojustice. (5) Final aim of the 
Law, or relation of the Law to faith. (6) Desire of redemption 
inspired by the insufficiency of the Law. 

Part Il—Christianity—(1) The redemption of the indi- 
vidual. (2) The birth and formation of the Christian com- 
munity. (3) The consummation of the Christian community. 

This contrast, suggested by the first chapters of the Epistle 
to the Romans, lends itself easily, through the vagueness of 
its outlines, to the most varied developments. But it has the 
fault of relegating to the background the Person of Christ, who 
makes his appearance only at the end of the work, immedi- 
ately before the parousia. 


The successors of Usteri tamely followed in his footsteps. 
They differ little from him in regard to the method of procedure 
and general point of view. Almost all of them hold to the 
Epistle to the Romans, as if that were the quintessence of 
Paul's doctrine, and, without denying the authenticity of the 
other Epistles, they make little use of them. It is always the 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 487 


antithesis between the past and the present, between the reign 
of sin and the reign of justice, between the impotence of man 
without Christ and his restoration by Christ. There is visible 
here the perhaps unconscious influence of official Protestant- 
ism, which regards justification by faith as the foundation of 
Christianity and the Epistle to the Romans as the résumé of 


Paul’s doctrine. All equally neglect the moral part of the 
Apostle’s teaching. 


Simar himself, whose chief merit was to show the way to 
Catholic writers, is of the opinion that, without excluding 
the other Epistles, Romans—the freest from polemics and 
the least subordinated to external circumstances and to the 
special needs of those addressed—reveals the most complete 
and genuine expression of Paul’s doctrine and of what might 
be called his scheme. He finds the fundamental idea of it 
(Grundgedanke) in ‘‘ the universality of the salvation which is 
prepared by God for all men, without regard to persons, and 
which is equally necessary for all.’”’ The fullest yet most concise 
expression of this thesis is in the utterance of the Apostle— 
‘‘ The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek: for the 
justice of God is revealed therein from faith unto faith ’’— 
provided that the texts which affirm the universality of sin 
and also those which explain the plan of redemption are com- 
pared with it. According to that, as Simar justly observes, 
the scheme of a theology of St Paul would admit of only two 
parts: (1) The need of redemption common to all men; (2) the 
fact of redemption considered in the person and work of the 
Redeemer. But reasons of symmetry make him divide up 
the second part into three subdivisions: (1) Universal redemp- 
tion in Christ; (2) subjective redemption (the individual 
acceptance of redemption) ; (3) the consummation of all things. 
In this way the work includes four principal sections. It is, 
in short, the traditional route pursued ever since Usteri. 


The presentation of the subject by Reuss, which is still read 
because it is written in a clear style, is also associated with the 
idea of Usteri, but while the latter made the theology of St 
Paul agree with the religious history of mankind, the Stras- 
burg professor prefers to see in it the portrait of the life of the 
Apostle, divided into two periods “‘ by the simple and sudden 
fact of his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus.”’ 
However, after this attempt at synthesis, Reuss seems to 
abandon any systematic plan, and his chapters succeed one 
another without any apparent order. 


488 | THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


2. CONTEMPORARY WoRKS 


O. Pfleiderer: Der Paulinismus, ein Bettrag zur Geschichte der 
urchristl. Theologie?, Leipzig, 1890 (1st ed., 1873). 

J. Bovon: Théologie du N.T., Lausanne, 1893-4 (2° éd., 1902-5). 

W. F. Adeney: The Theology of the N.T., New York, 1894. 

A. Sabatier: L’Apétre Paul, esquisse d’une histoire de sa pensée’, 
Paris, 1896 (1 édit., 1871). 

W. Beyschlag: Neutestam. Theologie*, Halle, 1896. ¢ 

H. pueplemann, Lehrbuch der neutest. Theologie, Freiburg-im- 

STLOOT. 

W. Schmidt: Die Lehre des Ap. Paulus, Giitersloh, 1898. 

C. Holsten: Das Evangelium des Paulus, Berlin, 1808. 

G. B. Stevens: The Theology of the N.T., Edinburgh, 1899. 

B. Weiss: Lehrbuch der bibl. Theologie des N.T.", Stuttgart, 


1903. 

G. B. Stevens: The Pauline Theology” (a study on the origin and 
correlation of the doctrinal teachings of the Apostle Paul), 
New York, 1906. ; 

A. Schlatter: Die Lehre der Apostel, Tiibingen, IgI0. 

P. Feine: Theologie des neuen Testaments, Leipzig, 1910 
(2nd ed., 1912). 

H. C. Sheldon: New Testament Theology, New York, Igit. 

H. Weinel: Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Tiibingen, 
IQII. 


Holsten, Pfleiderer, and Holtzmann are more or less directly 
dependent on Baur and belong to the liberal (or, as it would 
be called in France, the radical) school; Beyschlag, B. Weiss, 
A. Sabatier, and Stevens represent different shades of so-called 
conservative Protestantism, but the last two have subse- 
quently evolved in the liberal—that is, the rationalistic—direc- 
tion; Feine and Schlatter, and above all Bovon, sound a more 
conservative note.. We have read less of Adeney, Schmidt, 
and Weinel. . 

side by side with profound divergencies, Pfleiderer and | 
Holtzmann have numerous points of resemblance. Thanks 
to the progress of historical criticism, these two belated pupils 
of the Tiibingen school admit the authenticity of the Epistles 
to the Thessalonians, at least that of the first, and of the 
Epistle to the Philippians and of the note to Philemon: they 
even consent to recognize in a large measure Pauline ideas in 
the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians. Both of them, 
although freed from belief in the supernatural and denomina- 
tional opinions, nevertheless protest against what they call 
rationaism—that is to say, against the tendency to ascribe 
to the sacred writers the philosophic or religious ideas of our 
own age. Both believe that the theology of St Paul was 
derived from his conversion, or rather, from the psychological 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 489 


postulates which had rendered that conversion possible and 
necessary. But there their harmonious relations cease. While 
Pfleiderer is intent upon the most obscure texts and submits 
them to a keen analysis, unfortunately spoiled by an excess 
of ingenious subtlety, without troubling himself about what 
others have thought and said before him, Holtzmann displays 
with satisfaction a prodigious acquaintance with contemporary 
exegesis—I mean with German exegesis, for in his opinion real 
science begins in Tiibingen and rarely crosses the German 
frontiers. The former exhibits in all his writings such an effort 
to be clear that his thought is almost never ambiguous, but he 
changes his opinion so easily that one is never sure of having 
reached his final conclusion. The latter wraps himself in a 
protective obscurity; he proceeds by allusions and insinua- 
tions rather than by direct proofs; at every moment we must 
stop in order to verify his statements, and that is difficult; 
we ask ourselves anxiously whether we understand him, 
and whether he thoroughly understands himself. Whereas 
Pfleiderer uses every means to make the reader's course an 
easy one, Holtzmann seems to make it his business to impede 
it; but he regains his superiority in his presentation of the 
systems differing from his own and in his general views of the 
subject, wherein he excels. 

Holsten has the remarkable faculty of explaining the con- 
version of Paul by his theology, and his theology by his 
conversion. He thinks that, through much meditating on 
Christian arguments in favour of the resurrection of Jesus, 
Paul finally convinced himself first, that Jesus could have been 
raised from the dead, and then that he really had been; and 
that this persuasion produced the hallucination on the road 
to Damascus. But this new fact—the apparition of Jesus— 
had little by little upset and transformed all his former ideas 
about the justice of God, salvation, morals, and eschatology. 
In his presentation of Paul’s theology, Holsten reaches or 
surpasses the extremest limit of fantastic and arbitrary 
speculation. 


Weiss and Beyschlag take different conceptions of Lutheran- 
ism, and are opposed to each other in mind, method, principles, 
and tendencies, as is seen by their incessant use of satirical 
notes. B. Weiss distributes Paul’s writings, according to 
chronological order, into four groups, which are studied 
separately. Each chapter is divided into four paragraphs, 
and each paragraph into four sections. The latter are summed 
up at the head of the paragraph in the form of a thesis, and 
developed in the body of the article with the aid of many texts, 
notes, and references. Can all the Apostle’s doctrines be so 
easily cast into one uniform mould of four divisions ¢ Clearly 
this system of water-tight compartments narrows all horizons, 

i, 3! 


490 THE THEOLOGY OF?ST PAUL 


shortens all vistas, and renders all synthesis impossible. Order 
and clearness redeem in part this want of breadth, but the work 
resembles a concordance more than a theological presentation. 
Nevertheless, if to read it is painful, to consult it is useful. 
Unlike Weiss, Beyschlag does not aim at being complete. 
He devotes himself to the principal doctrines or to those which 
he deems such, and pursues them to the furthest limit. His 
exposition gains thereby in breadth, cohesion, and interest j 
but, unfortunately, he makes the whole theology of St Paul 
depend upon an antithesis, about which, as he himself confesses, 
exegetes indulge in a great confusion of ideas. This is the 
antithesis of “ flesh and spirit.’”” He thinks that the theology 
of the Apostle is the effort to solve this antithesis, which at once 
suggests another: ‘’ Adam and Christ.”” The two great historic 
figures of humanity explain the psychological enigma of the 
flesh and the spirit, and enable us to foresee the final victory 
of the latter. These form the vicissitudes of that struggle 
which has lasted since the decree of God in eternity, and will 
last till the final triumph at the time of the parousia, which 
Beyschlag invites us to contemplate. 


The characteristics of the style and exposition of Sabatier 
are well known. His Apétre Paul, in which history occupies 
a prominent place, has all the interest of an historical work. 
In the last part the author presents to us the Organisme du 
systéme théologique de Paul, or rather, the psychological evolu- 
tion of Paul’s thought under the influence of his “religious 
experience.’ What he has felt in himself Paul applies, by 
way of generalization, to every man, and from this comes his 
anthropology, his conceptions of sin and of the flesh, of faith 
and the Law, of justice and the new life. From the psycho- 
logical sphere the Christian principle is then transported into 
the social and historical domain; from the individual it passes 
to the universal. There remains one last ascent to be made in 
order to reach the metaphysical sphere and find in God “the 
first and ever-active Cause of this great evolution of justice and 
life,” which has been contemplated successively in the human 
conscience and the history of the world. These three different 
zones, he thinks, correspond to the three great periods in the 
life of Paul and to the three groups of his Epistles, from which 
Sabatier excludes, as doubtful, the Pastorals. But nothing 
justifies this concordance. What finally stamps upon the 
entire system the seal of arbitrariness is the fact that the notion 
of God is made its crown and climax. Now it is certain that 
the notion of God, an inheritance from Judaism, is one of the 
least characteristic points of Paul’s doctrine. 

Stevens does not, like Sabatier, pride himself on determining 
the progressive stages of Pauline theology. Commencing where 
Sabatier ends, he takes for the basis of his presentation the 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 491 


notion of God, with which he connects all the rest with no 
apparent bond. In the Theology of the New Testament by the 
same author, the notion of God loses its primacy, and the 
‘point of departure is anthropological.’’ Stevens redeems 
this inconsistency, however, by a clearness of exposition and 
a brilliancy of style which contrast favourably with the other 
theologies of St Paul, that of Sabatier excepted. 

Only a word concerning more recent authors. Feine is a 
believer. He admits the divinity of Jesus Christ and the 
miraculous character of the conversion of St Paul; but, like 
a good Protestant, he maintains the forensic value of justifica- 
tion and the symbolical meaning of the words of consecration, 
and makes modern criticism a multitude of concessions which 
considerably weaken his conservative principles. His work 
has, nevertheless, very real merits, and can be studied with 
profit even by Catholics., 

Schlatter, more conservative in tone than Feine, does not 
claim to make a critical theology, but merely a simple presenta- 
tion of the teaching of the Apostles. His profound acquaint- 
ance with Rabbinism allows him to produce interesting com- 
parisons with Jewish contemporary doctrines. 


II—PARTICULAR QUESTIONS 


I. PAUL’S CONVERSION, HIS GOSPEL AND INFLUENCE 


Irons: Christianity as Taught by St Paul, 1876. 

J. F. Clarke: The Ideas of the Apostle Paul translated into their 
Modern Equivalents, Boston, 1884. 

QO. Pfleiderer: The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Develop- 
ment of Christiamty, London, 1885 (Hibbert Lectures). 

C. Everett: The Gospel of Paul, Boston, 1893. 

A. B. Bruce: St Paul’s Conception of Christiantty?, Edinburgh, 


1894. 

O. Cone: Paul, the Man, the Missionary, and the Teacher, New 
York, 1808. | 

Thackeray: The Relation of St Paul to contemporary Jewish 
Thought, London, 1900. 

C. Anderson Scott: The Gospel according to St Paul, its Char- 
acter and Course (in Expositor, 1900, vol. ii, pp. 202-10). 

*V. Rose: Comment Paul a connu le Christ (in Revue bibdl., 
1902, pp. 321-46). 

*Bourgine, Conversion de saint Paul. Saint Paul a-t-tl été 
halluciné ? Paris, 1902. 

*E. Moske: Die Bekehrung des hetl. Paulus, Eine exegetisch- 
kritische Untersuchung (complete Catholic bibliography), 
Miinster, 1907. 

Du Bose: The Gospel according to St Paul, London, 1907 
(popular). 


492 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Th. Ohler: Der Ap. Paulus und sein Evangelium als Autoritat 
fiir den Glauben, Bale, 1907. . 

*S. Protin: La théologie de S Paul. L’évangile de S Paul 
(in Revue Augustintenne, Avril, 1908). 

A. Seeligmiiller: War Paulus Epileptiker ? Erwagungen eines 
Nervenarztes, Leipzig, Igro. 

A. C. Headlam: St Paul and Christianity, London, 1913. 

J. G. Machen: The Origin of Paul’s Religion, New York, 1g2r. 


2. PSYCHOLOGY. FLESH AND SPIRIT. SIN 


Tholuck: Ueber odp€ als Quelle der Siinde, in Stud. und Krit., 
1855, fasc. 3. 

Holsten: Die Bedeutung des Wortes oap& 1m Lehrbegriff des 
Paulus, 1855, in his Zum Evangelium des Paulus und 
Petrus, Rostock, 1868. 

Krumm: De notiombus psychologicis Paulinis, 1858. 

L. Ernesti: Vom Ursprung der Siinde nach paulin. Lehrgehalte, 
G6ttingen, 1862. 

O. Pfleiderer: Das paulinische Ivetpa, in Zeitschrift fir wiss. 
Theol. XIV. (1871), pp. 161-182. 

Ecklund: Zdp£ vocab. quid apud Paulum significet, Lund, 
1872. | 

H. Liidemann: Die Anthropologie des Ap. Paulus, Kiel, 1872. 

H. Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist im bibl. Sprachge- 
brauch, Gotha, 1878. 

W. P. Dickson: St Paul’s Use of the Terms Flesh and Spinit, 
Glasgow, 1883. 

J. Gloél: Der Stand 1m Fleische nach paulinischem Zeugniss, 
Halle, 1886; Der Hetlige Geist in der Heilsverkiindigung des 
Paulus, Halle, 1888. ; 

H. Gunkel: Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes, nach der 
populdren Anschauung der apost. Zeit. und nach der Lehre 
des Ap. Paulus, Gottingen, 1888 (3rd ed., 1909). 

A. Westphal: De Epist. Pauli ad Romanos septimo capite 
(7-25) commentatio critico-theologica, Toulouse, 1888. 

T. Simon: Die Psychologie des Ap. Paulus, Géttingen, 1897. 

*H. Sladeczek, Paulinische Lehre tiber das Moralsubjekt, als 
anthropologische Vorschule zur Moraltheologie des heil. 
Ap. Paulus, Ratisbon, 1899. 

R. Triimpert: Die Lehre von der Stinde nach den Schriften des 
N.T., Darmstadt, Igor. 

E. Sokolowski: Die Begriffe Geist und Leben bei Paulus in ihren 
Beztehungen mit einander. Eine exegetisch-religionsgesch. 
Untersuchung, Gottingen, 1903. 

H. Windisch: Die Entstindigung des Christen nach Paulus, 
Leipzig, 1908. 

J. Arnal: La notion de VEsprit. I. La doctrine pauhmienne, 
Paris, 1908. 

R. Steinmetz: Das Gewissen bet Paulus, Berlin, 1911. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 493 


3. THEODICY AND PREDESTINATION 


Poelman: De Jesu Apostolorumque, Pauli praesertim, doctrina 
de praedestinatione divina et moralt hominis lbertate, 
Groningen, 185I. 

B. Weiss: Die Prédestinationslehre des Ap. Paulus (in Jahrb. 
f. deutsche Theologie, t. II, 1857, pp. 54-115). 

*Lamping: Pauli de praedestinatione decretorum enarratto, 
Liége, 1858. 

W. Bera Die paulin. Theodicee, Berlin, 1868 (2nd ed., 
1896). 

E. Ménégoz, La prédestination dans la théologie paulinienne, 
Paris, 1884. : 

Goens: Le réle de la liberté humaine dans la prédestination 
paulinienne, Lausanne, 1884. 

*V. Weber: Kritische Geschichte der Exegese des 9 Kapitels 
resp. der verse 14-23 des Rémerbriefes bis auf Chrysostomus 
und Augustinus einschliesslich, Wurzburg, 1889. 

K. Miiller: Die gétiliche Zuvorersehung und Erwahlung nach 
dem Evang. des Paulus, Halle, 1891. 

J. Dalmer: Die Erwéhlung Israels nach der Hetlsverkiindigung 
des Ap. Paulus, Giitersloh, 1894; Zur paulin. Erwahl- 
ungslehre in Griefswdlder Studien, Giitersloh, 1895. 

Kithl: Zur paulin. Theodicee (in Theol. Studien), Gottingen, 
1897. 

E. Weber: Das Problem der Heilsgeschichte nach Rém. 9-11, 
Leipzig, IQII. 


4. CHRISTOLOGY AND SOTERIOLOGY 


Full bibliography in H. Schumacher: Christus 1m seiner 
Préexistenz und Kenose, etc., Rome, 1914 (Btblioth. de 
V Institut Biblique), pp. xili-xxx. Cf. t. I, p. 533. 

R. Schmidt: Die paulin. Christologie in threm Zusammenhange 
mit der Heilslehre des Apostels, Gottingen, 1870. 

A. Dietzsch: Adam und Christus, Rom. V, 12-21, Bonn, 1871. 

E. Ménégoz: Le péché et la redemption d’aprés saint Paul, Paris, 
1882. 

W. Weiffenbach: Zur Auslegung der Stelle Phil. II, 5-11, 
zugleich ein Beitrag zur paulin. Christologte, Leipzig, 1884. 

A. Seeberg: Die Anbetung des Herrn bei Paulus, Riga, 1891. 

W. P. Du Bose: The Soteriology of the N.T., New York, 1892. 

A. Seeberg: Der Tod Jesu in seiner Bedeutung fiir die Erlosung, 
Leipzig, 1895. 

Karl: Beitrdge zum Verstindniss der soteriologischen Erfahr- 
ungen und Spekulationen des Ap. Paulus, Strasburg, 1896. 

E. H. Gifford: The Incarnation, a Study of Phil. II, 5-11, New 
York, 1897. 

D. Somerville: Saint Paul’s Conception of Christ or the Doctrine 
of the Second Adam, Edinburgh, 1897. 


494 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


*J. Labourt: Notes d’exégése sur Phil. II, 3-11 (in Revue bibl. 
VII, 1898, pp. 402-415 et 553-563). 

*V. Rose: Jésus-Christ, setgneur et fils de Dieu (in Revue bibl., 
1903, PP. 337-361). es “itty 

J. Denney: The Death of Christ ; its place and interpretation in 
the N.T., London, 1903. 

M. Briickner: Die Entstehung der paulin. Christologie, Stras- 
burg, 1903. 

A. Arnal: La personne du Christ et le rationalisme allemand 
contemporain, Paris, 1904. 

J. F. S. Muth: Die Heilstat Christi als stelluertretende Genug- 
tuung, Munich, 1904. 

E. Ménégoz: La mort de Jésus et le dogme de l’expiation, Paris, 


1905. : 7a 

nb vai Crombrugghe: De soteriologiae christianae primis 
fontibus, Louvain, 1905. 

Stevens: The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, Edinburgh, 1905. 

*H. Couget: La divinite de Jésus-Christ. L’enseignement de 
saint Paul, Paris, 1906. 

Wetzel: Grundlinien der Verséhnungslehre?, Leipzig, 1906. 

Anonymous: The Fifth Gospel, being the Pauline Interpretation 
of the Christ, London, 1907. ; 

*A. Royet, Etude sur la christologie des Epitres de saint Paul, 
Lyon, 1907. 

J. Kogel: Christus der Herr. Erlauterungen zu Phil. 2, 5-11, 
Giitersloh, 1908. 

W. Olschewski: Die Wurzeln der paulin. Christologie, Koenigs- 
berg, 1909. 


5. FAITH AND JUSTIFICATION 


Lipsius: Die paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre, Leipzig, 1853. 

J. Winter: Essai sur la prédestination d’aprés saint Paul, 1862. 

*J. Wieser: Pauli apostoli doctrina de justificatione ex fide sine 
operibus et ex fide operante, Trent, 1874. | 

G. Schnedermann: De fidet notione ethica paulina, Leipzig, 
1880. 

Fricke: Der paulin. Grundbegriff der Sixavootvn Ocod erértert auf 
Grund von Rém. 3, 21-26, Leipzig, 1887. 

G. Schwarz: Justitia imputata? Eine neue Erklirung der 
entscherdenden Auspriiche des Ap. Paulus iiber die Recht- 
fertigung, Heidelberg, 1892. 

E. Schader: Die Bedeutung des lebendigen Christus fiir die 
Rechtfertigung nach Paulus, Giitersloh, 1893. 

*B. Bartmann: St Paulus und St Jacobus tiber die Rechtferts- 
gung, Freiburg-im-B., 1897 (Brbl. Studien, fasc. II, t. I). 

E. Riggenbach: Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Ap. Paulus, 
stuttgardt, 1897. 

H. Cremer: Die paulin, Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammen- 
hange threr geschichil. Voraussetzungen, Gitersloh, 1goo. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 495 


H. F. Nosgen: Der Schriftbeweis fiir die evangeltsche Recht- 
fertigungslehre, Halle, 19ot. 

Liitgert: Die Lehre von der Rechtfertigung durch den Glauben, 
Berlin, 1903. 

E. Kiihl: Rechtfertigung auf Grund Glaubens und Gericht nach 
den Werken bei Paulus, Koenigsberg, 1904; Die Stellung 
des Jacobusbriefes zum alttestam. Gesetz. und zur paulin. 
Rechtfertigungslehre, Koenigsberg, 1905. ° 

K. Miller: Beobachtungen zur paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre, 
Leipzig, 1905. 

J. H. Gerretsen: Rechtvaardigmaking bij Paulus, Nimégen, 


1905. 

E. Cremer: Rechtfertigung und Wiedergeburt, Gitersloh, 1907 
(in Beitrége zur Forderung christl. Theologie, Year XI, 
fasc. 5). 

*E. Tobac: Le probléme de la justification dans saint Paul, 
Louvain, 1908. 


6. MORALS AND MYSTICISM 


L. Ernesti: Die Ethik des Ap. Paulus in thren Grundzigen 
dargestellt?, Gottingen, 1880 (1st ed., 1868). 

Von Soden: Die Ethik des Paulus (in Zeitschrift f. Theol. w. 
Kirche, 1892, pp. 109-146). 

*H. Sladeczek: Paulinische Lehre iiber das Moralsubjekt, 
Ratisbon, 1899. 

H. Jacoby: Dre neutest. Ethik, Koenigsberg, 1899 (pp. 243-406). 

Titius: Der Paulinismus unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Seligkert, 
Tiibingen, 1900. 

*Ch. Calippe: Saint Paul et la cité chrétienne, Paris, 1902. 

G. Bindemann: Das Gebet um tigliche Vergebung der Stinden 
in der Heilsverkiindigung Jesu und in den Briefen des 
A bpostels Paulus, Giitersloh, 1902. 

*A. Rademacher: Die iibernatiirliche Lebensordnung nach der 
paulin. und der johann. Theologie, Freiburg-im-B., 1903. 

A. Juncker: Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus, Halle, 1904; 2nd 
part: Die konkrete Ethik, Halle, 1920 (important work 
on the theology of St Paul from the moral point of 
view). 

*V. Ermoni: Saint Paul et la priére, Paris, 1907. 

W. E. Chadwick: The Pastoral Teaching of St Paul, Edinburgh, 
IQIo. 

A. B. D. Alexander: The Ethics of Paul, Glasgow, 1910. 

*K. Benz: Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus, Friburg-im-B., 1912 
(complete bibliography). 

*H. Bertrams: Das Wesen des Geistes nach der Anschauung des 
Apostels Paulus, Munster-im-W., 1914. 

*W. Reinhard: Das Wirken des heiligen Geistes 1m Menschen 
nach den Briefen des Apostels Paulus, Freiburg-im-B., 1919. 


496 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


K. Deissner: Paulus und die Mystik seiner Zeit?, Leipzig, 192. 
*]. Duperray: Le Christ dans la vie chrétienne d’apres saint 
Paul’, Gand, 1922. 


7. ESCHATOLOGY 


Stahelin: Zur paulin. Eschatologie (in Jahrb. f. deutsche 
Theol., 1874, pp. 199-218). 

Fr. Késtlin: Die Lehre des Ap. Paulus von der Auferstehung 
(in Zeitschrift f. deutsche Theol., 1877, p. 259). 

*L. Atzberger: Dte christliche Eschatologte in den Stadten threr 
Offenbarung im A.und N. Testament, Freiburg-im-B., 1890. 

R. Kabisch: Dre Eschatologie des Paulus, Gottingen, 1893. 

Slotemaker de Bruine: De eschatologische Voorstellingen in 
I en II Corinthe, Utrecht, 1894. 

E. Teichmann: Die paulin. Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und 
Gericht und thre Bexehung zur jidischen Apocalyptik, 
Leipzig, 1896. 

P. Volz: Jiidische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, Tiitbingen, 
1903. 

Koreas St Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things, London, 


1904. 

E. Kinl: Ueber 2 Korinther 5, 1-10. Ein Beitrag zur Frage 
nach dem Hellenismus bet Paulus, Koenigsberg, 1904. 
*Fr. Tillmann: Die Wiederkunft Christi nach den paulinischen 

Bniefen, Freiburg-im-B., 1909. 


_ 8. THE CONTROVERSY—PAUL OR JESUS? 

P. Wernle: Die Anfiange unserer Religion, Tibingen, root. 

P. Feine: Das gesetzesfreie Evangelium des Paulus nach seinem 
Werdegang dargestellt, Leipzig, 1899 et Jesus Christus und 
Paulus, Leipzig, 1902; cf. Rev. bibl., 1904, pp. 117-120. 

Goguel: L’Apétre Paul et Jésus-Christ, Paris, 1904. 

Weinel: Paulus, der Mensch und sein Werk, Tiibingen, 1904. 

W. Wrede: Paulus, Leipzig, 1905. 

Kaftan: Jesus und Paulus, Tibingen, 1906 (deals with Bousset 
and Wrede). 

Kélbing: Dte geistige Einwirkung der Person Jesu auf Paulus, 
Gottingen, peas 

A. Meyer: Wer hat das Christentum begriindet, Jesus oder 
Paulus ? Tibingen, 1907. 

A. Jiilicher: Paulus und Jesus, Titbingen, 1907. 

J. Weiss: Christus. Die Anfdnge des Dogmas, ‘Tiibingen, 1909; 
Paulus uud Jesus, Berlin, 1909. 

Wustmann: Jesus und Paulus. Dte Abhingigheit des A postels 
von seinem Herrn, Giitersloh, 1909. 

Scott: Jesus and Paul, London, 1909 (Cambridge Bibl. Essays). 

*P. Dausch: Jesus und Paulus, Minster, 1910 (Bibl. Zeitfragen). 


For a fuller bibliography see Dictionnaire apologétique de la 
fot catholique, our article Paulinisme. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 497 


9g. DIFFERENT QUESTIONS 


Rogge: Die Anschauungen des Ap. Paulus von dem relig.-sttil. 
Character des Heidenthums, Fiirstenwalde, 1887. 

Beyschlag: Hat der Ap. Paulus dte Hetdengotter fiir Damonen 
gehalten? Halle, 1894. 

B. Duhm: Pauli apost. de Judaeorum religione judicia, Gottin- 
gen, 1873. 

A. Zahn: Das Gesetz Gottes nach der Lehre und Erfahrung des 
Ap. Paulus’, Halle, 1892. 

FE. Grafe: Die paulin. Lehre vom Gesetz nach den vier Haupt- 
briefen*, Leipzig, 1893. 

Schulz: Ti otv 6 vouos; Verhdlintss von Gesetz, Siinde und 
Evangelium nach Gal. 3 (in Stud. und Knit., 1902, 
PP. 5-55). hee 

Kahler: Auslegung von Kap., 2, 14-16 1m Roémerbrief (in 
Stud. und Knit., t. XLVII, 1874, pp. 261-306). 

Giesecke: Zur Exegese von Rom. 2, 11-16 (Idid., t. LIX, 1886, 
i Ry eas Seeeeeten 

QO. Everling: Die paulimische Angelologie und Dimonologie, 
Gottingen, 1888. 

*J. Quirmbach: Die Lehre des hl. Paulus von der natiirlichen 
Gotteserkenntnis und dem nattirlichen Sittengesetz, Freiburg- 
im-B., 1906. 

M. Dibelius: Die Getsterwelt 1m Glauben des Paulus, Gottingen, 


1909. 

*G. Kurze: Der Engels-und Teufelsglaube des Apostels Paulus, 
Freiburg-im-B., IgI5. 

*B. Bartmann: Paulus. Die Grundziige seiner Lehre und die 
moderne Religionsgeschichte, Paderborn, 1914. 

*P. Tischleder: Wesen und Stellung der Frau nach der Lehre 
des hetligen Paulus, Munster-im-W., 1923. 


A great many other works have been mentioned in regard 
to special questions treated in the detached notes. It is 
sufficient for us to refer the reader to them. 


44 


me 


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* 


ote | 


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an 
Wy 





GENERAL TABLES 


TuE_ tables which follow are common to both volumes. 


The first is an analytical summary of the principal points 
dealt with in the course of the work, necessarily very in- 
complete, and intended merely as a general guide to the 
reader. 


The second is an alphabetical index of subjects ; without 
duplicating the preceding, it will serve as an easier mode 
of reference in some cases. 


The third is an index to the passages of St Paul and of 
the Acts which are commented on or discussed ; texts which 
are merely quoted are not included. 


The last is a list of Greek words studied from the 
symbolical, syntactical, or morphological standpoint. 


In each table the roman numerals indicate the volume, 
the arabic the page. References may be either to text or 
notes. ~ 


499 





I—ANALYTICAL SUMMARY 


SINCE the theology of Saint Paul is, above all, a doctrine of salvation, 
it has to be considered as the plan of redemption in action. The 
author has tried to effect a reconciliation between the usual divisions 
of dogmatic theology and the Apostle’s point of view. His teaching 
has been grouped under four general headings, which are subdivided 
into sections as simple and comprehensive as possible. 


I—PAUL AND HIS WORK 


I—THE CONVERTED PHARISEE : 


1. Education at Tarsus and Jerusalem - I, 12-22 
2. Saul the Pharisee, Persecutor of the 


Church . - - + A 22326 
3. Apparition of Christ on the Road to 

Damascus” - . - - 1, 25-28 
4. Paul’s Character - - - I, 156-158 
5. His Physical Weakness - - I, 158-160 

II—THE APOSTLE OF THE GENTILES : 

1. First Campaigns - - I, 42-61 
2. Period of the great Struggles— 

a. Thessalonians : - I, 71-83 

6. Corinthians - - - I, 87-105; 142-160 

c. Galatians - - - - I, 163-168 

d. Romans - - - - I, 189-191 
3. Paul a Prisoner for Christ - Puy 279i ate 
4. Chronology. Chief Landmarks - I, 397-410 


III—THE WRITER AND HIS WorK: 


1. Question of Authenticity - SI, pee Meg TE 473-477 


2. Literary Classification - oa 15 G2 

3. Peculiarities of Style - - - I, 68-71 

4. Use of the Old Testament - ~ /1,°18-233 7411-417 

5. Analysis of the Epistles - - I, 481-523 
IV—THE THEOLOGIAN : 

1. Biblical Theology - - Se Se 

2. Meaning of Paulinism - =) I} 3:21 

3- Sources of Paulinism - : oe ltr aenad 

4. Theologies of St Paul - - - II, 477-489 


II—GOD AND CHRIST 


I—Gop’s INNER LIFE: 


x. The Trinity in Unity - - - II, 132-138 
2. God the Father - - - II, 138-140 
3. The Son of God - - - II, 140-142 


4. The Son and the Holy Ghost - II, 142-146; 291-294 


501 


502 THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


YI—Tue PLAN OF REDEMPTION : 


. The Heavenly Father’s Will to Save - II, 77-80 

2. Election and Predestination in 
Christ - : - I, 240-246 
3. Plan of Salvation for Men - - II, 82-94 


III—THE PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS : 
1. The State of Nature or Times of 


Ignorance - - - - -II, 94-96 
2. The Era of the Messianic Promises - II, 96-99 
3. The Reign of the Mosaic Law - II, 99-107 
4. The Fulness of the Times” - nl 1072108 


III—MAN AND CHRIST 


I—HuMAn NATURE: 


. Pauline Psychology - - II, 47-57 
2. Inward Man and Outward Man - rik 52-57 3 401-407 
3. Flesh and Spirit - : - II, 69-76 
II—MAN AND SIN: 
1. Origin of Sin - - - - II, 56-60; 211-219 
2. Universality of Sin - - - II, 60-62 
3. Reign of Sin - - - - II, 62-66 


IJIJ—MAN AND REDEMPTION : 


1. Powerlessness of Nature and the Law I, 194-204 
2. Christ effects Expishien and Pro- 

pitiation - - I, 204-208 ; 429-432 
3. Man’s Share: Faith in Christ - I, 208-210 


IV—CHRIST THE SAVIOUR 


I—THE PERSON OF CHRIST: 


1. Divine Nature— 


a. Divine Pre-existence - - II, 111-116 
6. Divine Attributes - - II, 116-124 
c. Equality with God - - II, 124-131 
2. Human Nature— 
a. Christ truly Man - II, 149-151; I, 373-374 


b. Historical Figure of Jesus - II, 154-157 
3. Union of. the Two Natures— 


a. Mystery of this Union - - II, 151-153; I, 294-296 
6. Neither Mingling nor Diminu- en 
tion) 4) - - I, 300-308 
4. The Ambassador of God— 
a. Redemptive Mission” - - II, 161-166 
6. Christ the Sole Mediator - II, 166-170 


c. Sinless and Incapable of Sin -. II, 177-179 
5. Primacy of Christ-— 


a. Firstborn of Creation - - I, 287-292 
6. Higher than the Angels - I, 292-294 
¢. Link and Centre of Creation - II, 89-93 


ANALYTICAL SUMMARY 503 


II—THE WorK OF REDEMPTION : 
1. The Fact of Redemption— 
a. Christ, Agent of Propitiation - I, 204-208 
4. Christ, Priest and Victim - I, 374-384; II, 180-185 
2. Theory of Redemption— 
a. Subjective and Objective Value II, 188-200 


&. Principle of Solidarity - - II, 200-208; 446-447 
c. Doctrinal Synthesis - - II, 211-213 
3. Immediate Effects of Redemption— 
a. God rendered Propitious Sil li2ta-277 
6. Creatures Reconciled - old 21 7-22% 
c, Enemies Vanquished - - II, 221-229; I, 210-237 


{l1I—THE CHANNELS OF REDEMPTION: 
1. Justifying Faith— 


a. Nature of Faith - - - II, 234-237 
5. Object of Faith - - - II, 237-239 
c. Value of Faith - . - II, 239-242 
d. Justice of God - - - II, 242-246; 459 460 
é. Justification by Faith - - II, 246-250 


2. The Sacraments— 


a. Baptism - - - II, 254-261; I, 221-223 
6. Confirmation - - - II, 261-263 
c. Eucharist - - - II, 263-268; I, 123-127 
ad. Holy Order - - - II, 268-271 
é. Marriage - - - II, 271-274; I, 106-115 


3. The Church— 


a. Name, Meaning and Properties II, 275-283 
6. Life of the Church - - II, 283-299; I, 300-309 
c. Communion of Saints - - II, 294-297 
d. Ecclesiastical Hierarchy - II, 299-30 
e. Government of the Church - ia 303- EaCD I, 341-349 


IV—THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION : 
1. Christian Morality— 


a. Principles of Morality - mel le 441-328 
6. Social Morality - - - II, 321-332 


¢, Individual Morality - II, 332-342 
a2, Perfection and the Counsels Il, 343-351 
2. The Last Ends— 
a. Paul’s Eschatology - «91 1,°352-357 
&. The Parousia of Christ - - II, 370-372 
c. The Resurrection of the Just - II, 360-364; I; 133-138 
d. The Glorification of the Living- Il, 364-369; I, a 141 
e. The Last Judgement” - 1p 372-376 
f/. Handing Back of the Kingdom 
to the Father - - II, 376-381 
g. 


The Consummation . of all 
Things - - . - II, 381-382 


II—ALPHABETICAL INDEX 


ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. See Dis- 
courses of the Acts 

Adam: and sin, I, 211-218; and 
Christ, I, 438-440; fall of, in 
Jewish theology, I, 440-442; new 
A., II, 171-179 

Agape, four abuses in celebrating 
the, 1, 122-123 ; 

Age, present, and age to come, II, 
63-65, 354-350 | 

Almsgiving, motives for, I, 150- 


152 
Ambassador of the Father. See 
Redeeming Mission 


Analysis of the Epistles. See 
Epistles 
Angels: various names, I, 293- 


294; distinction of, in St Paul, 
II, 408-410 

Angels and demons, Jewish ideas 
of, II, 408-410; hierarchy of, 
Il, 411-413 

Antichrist: obstacle to his ap- 
pearing, I, 80; various con- 
jectures regarding, I, 80-83 

Apostle: collaborator of God, I, 
93-97; servant of Christ, I, 97- 


99 
Apostolate, charisma of the, I, 424 
Asceticism, Christian, I1, 346-350 
and 472-473 
Augustine, St: on foreknowledge 
and predestination, I, 247-249; 
on hardness of heart, I, 261-262 
Authenticity. See Epistles 
Authority, the Christian and, II, 
321-3206 


Baptism: mystical death, I, 221- 
223 and II, 256-260; principle 
of life, I, 223-224; manifold 
symbolism, II, 254-256; and 
faith, II, 260-261; for the dead, 
I, 136-138; Christian, and Bath 
of the Proselytes, II, 466-468 

Baptize, to, and baptism: mean- 
ing of the words, II, 461-462; to 
baptize in Christ, II, 462-463; 
to baptize in Christ’s name, IT, 
463-466 

Biblical Commission: on _ the 
parousta, 1, 83; on the Pastorals, 


Collection: for the 


I, 472; on the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, I, 479-480 

Bishop: in the letters of St Ig- 
natius, I, 341; no bishop pro- 
perly so-called in the Pauline 
churches, I,. 341-345, II, 299, 
302 

Body, meaning of the word, II, 
401-402 . 

Body and flesh, difference, II, 52 

Body of Christ, mystical. See 
Mystical Body 


Captivity, Epistles of the: com- 
mon characteristics, I, 271-275 
Catechesis, Apostolic: its exist- 

ence, II, 28-32; its contents, 32- 


s 

Celibacy. See Marriage 

Charismata: definition, I, 127- 
129; lists of, I, 423-424; dis- 
tinction of, I, 424-426 

Charity : words used to define it, 
II, 470-472. See Theological 
Virtues 

Christ and Christology. See Jesus 
Christ 

Chronology: fixed points, I, 397- 
405; principal dates, I, 405-410 

Church: names of the, II, 275- 
277; Pauline. idea of, 277-279; 
four notes of, II, 279-283; the 
complement of Christ, II, 283- 
284; the mystical Body of 
Christ, II, 285-488; the Holy 
Spirit its Soul, II, 288-291; its 
hierarchical government, II, 
299-303; coercive power, II, 
303-306; St Paul’s churches, II, 
306-308 

poor of 
Jerusalem, I, 149-150; motives 
for almsgiving, 1, 150-153 

Colossians, Epistle to, I, 280-281 ; 


errors of the, I, 281-287; 
analysis, I, 511-513 
Commission, Biblical, See Bibli- 


cal Commission 
Communion. See Eucharist. 
Communion of Saints, II, 294- 


297 
Confirmation, II, 261-263 


504 


ALPHABETICAL INDEX 


Conscience in Pauline psychology, 
IT, 49-50 

Consummation, in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, I, 393-396 

Consummation of all things, II, 
376-382. See Eschatology. 

Corinthians, Epistles to: the 
parties at Corinth, I, 87-99; 
scandals, I, 99-103; lawsuits 
among Christians, I, 103-105; 
cases of conscience, I, 106-141. 
See Marriage, Idolothyta, Char- 
tsmata, A gape, Eucharist, Resur- 
rection, Collection, misunder- 
standings, I, 142-144; reply to 
the murmurers, I, 144-149; to 


agitators, I, 153-158; analysis of | 


the two Epistles, I, 490-504 
Counsels, Evangelical, II, 343-344 
Covenants : contrast of the two, I, 

385-388; obligations of the new, 

I, 388-393 (Hebrews) 

Creation associated with man’s 

glorification, I, 237-239 


Day of the Lord. See Eschatology 

Deaconesses (?), I, 349-350 

Deacons: the name, I, 342-343; 
qualities, 348-349 

Decree of Jerusalem on legal ob- 
servances, I, 48-50; meaning of, 
I, 418-419; Western form of, I, 
419-420; how understood by the 
Fathers, I, 420-422 


Demon. See Satan 

Demons and angels in Jewish 
ideas, II, 408-410; in St Paul, 
Il, 413-415 an? 

Discourses of the Acts: their his- 
torical value, I, 8-11; Paul’s 
sermons, 53-54; at Antioch in 


Pisidia, I, 54-57; at Lystra, I, 
57-58; at Athens, I, 58-61 

Doxology: megning, II, 121-122. 
See Jesus Christ 


Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. See 
Hierarchy 

Election, divine, I, 436; II, 79 

Elemental spirits, II, 67-69, 422 

Elements of the world: meaning 
of the word, II, 417-419; mean- 
ing of the expression, II, 104- 
107, 421-42 

End of the world. See Eschatology 

Ephesians, Epistle to the : authen- 
ticity, I, 6-7; characteristics and 
contents, I, 271-275, 300; analy- 
sis, I, 508-so 

Epistles : authenticity, I, 4-8. See 


it; 


505 

Pastorals, Hebrews. Analysis, 
I, 481-523. See Letters 

Esau and Jacob, I, 253-254 

Eschatology: points of contact 
with Judaism, II, 352-356; real 
sources of New Testament escha- 
tology, II, 356-357; death and 
the hereafter, II, 357-360; resur- 
rection of the dead, II, 360-364; 
fate of living witnesses of the 
parousia, II, 364-370; the last 
judgement, II, 372-374; separa- 
tion of the good from the wicked, 
II, 374-376; the heavenly king- 
dom, II, 376-381; the final end, 
381-382 ; Jewish and Pauline, II, 
474-476. See Antichrist 

Eucharist: joined with the cele- 
bration of the Agape, I, 119Q- 
127; Pauline formulas, II, 263- 
267; allusions to sacrifice, II, 
267-268; dispositions for its 
reception, I, 126-127; means of 
perfection, II, 350-351 


Faith: general notion and ele- 
ments, I, 168-174; justification 
by, I, 174-180; St Paul and St 
James, 180-182; definition of, I, 
388-391 (Hebrews); nature of, 
II, 234-237; object, II, 237-239; 
value, II, 239-242; Protestant 
and Catholic, II, 233-234; and 
baptism, II, 260-261 

Family, Christian, II, 326-330 

Flesh : meaning of the word, II, 
71-74, 402-404; flesh and body, 
II, 52; flesh and sin, II, 74-76; 
flesh and spirit, II, 52-54 and 71- 
74; the flesh subdued by the 
spirit, I, 233-237 

Foreknowledge, See Prescience 

Freewill and grace, II, 82-85 

Fulness of being and grace. See 
Jesus Christ 

Fulness of time or of the times, 
II, 107-108 


Galatians, Epistle to: recipients, 
I, 163-166; attacks of agitators, 
I, 167-168; analysis, I, 504-508 

Gentiles, II, 94-96; knew God, I, 
194-198; and the national law, 
I, 198-202; how punished, I, 
202-204 

Gift of Tongues. See Glossolalia 

Glossolalia, nature of this char- 
tsma, 1, 129-133, 426-428 

God: faithful and just in reject- 
ing the Jews, I, 249-262. See 
Trinity 

32 


506 


Gospel: meaning of the word, II, 
397-398; in St Paul, II, 398-3995 
the agent of salvation, I, 163-166, 
180-181 : 

Gospel of Christ, II, 399-400 

Grace. See Redeeming Plan, 
Saving Will, Jesus Christ 

Grace and free will, II, 82-85 


Hardening of heart : Pharaoh’s, I, 
255; allegory of the potter, I, 
255-259; teaching of the Fathers, 
I, 259-262 

Heart in Paul’s psychology, II, 
47-48 

Hebrews, Epistle to : character and 
style, I, 355-356; authenticity, I, 
356-360, 477-479; relations with 
Philo (?), I, 360-362; relations 
with St Paul, I, 362-363; his- 
torical setting and recipients, I, 
363-365 ; dominant idea, 365-367 ; 
hypotheses as to author and 
editor, I, 477-479; decision of 
Biblical Commission, I, 479; 
analysis, I, 520-523 

Hellenism. See Paulinism 

Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical, I, 341- 
351; II, 299-303 oli 

Holy Ghost. See Holy Spirit 

Holy Spirit: divinity, II, 132- 
134; personality, II, 142-146; 
soul of the Church, II, 288- 
291; and Christ, II, 291-294; in 
the Spirit and in Christ, II, 395 

Hope: certitude, I, 237-249. See 
Theological Virtues 


Idolothyta or meats consecrated to 
idols: the three cases, I, 115- 
117; solutions, I, 117-119 

Imitation of Christ, II, 344-346 


Jacob. See Esau 

James and Paul. .See Faith 

Jesus Christ: Pre-existent, II, 
113-116, 146-147; image of God, 
I, 287-289; firstborn of every 
creature, I, 289-291; Creator of 
all things, I, 291-292, 371-373 
(Hebrews); image and imprint 
of the Father, I, 367-371 
(Hebrews); Jesus Christ, Lord, 
identified with Jehovah, II, 117- 
119, 138-140; object of prayers 
and doxologies, II, 119-124; 
Jesus Christ, Son of God and 
God, II, 124-132; chief Christo- 
logical texts, I, 310-316, 456-465 ; 
II, 124-132, 424-430 


THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Sent by God, II, 161-166; the 
new Adam, II, 171-179; sole 
Mediator of the New Covenant, 
II, 166-171; Head of the mysti- 
cal body, I, 302-308; Head of 
the Angels, I, 292-294; possesses 
the fulness of being and grace, 
I, 294-299 ;summary of his titles, 
II, 129-131 

Truly Man, II, 149-151, I, 373- 
374 (Hebrews); union of two 
natures in him, II, 151-154; 
mystery of his self-stripping, I, 
316-324; priest after the order 
of Melchisedech, I, 377-380 
(Hebrews) ; offers himself on the 
Cross, I, 380-384 (Hebrews), IT, 
180-181; conqueror of sin, I, 
210-221, of death, I, 221-224, of 
the flesh, I, 224-237, II, 221-223 

Jesus and Paul, II, 22-26; 
Paul’s idea of Christ, II, r11- 
113; what Paul tells us of the 
historical Christ, II, 154-159 

Christ and the Spirit, II, 291- 
294, 395-396 ea 

ommunicatto idiomatum be- 

tween Christ and Christians, II, 
17-20; the phrase /n Christo 
Jesu, II, 297-299, 391-396 

Jews under the yoke of sin, I, 
202-204; their election, I, 252- 
259; their prerogatives, I, 251, 
II, 99-104; their rejection just 
and providential, I, 249-262; 
future conversion, I, 264-267 

Judaism. See Paulinism 

Just and justice: Catholic notion, 
I, 169-171, II, 456-458; justice of 
God, II, 242-246, 459-460; how 
justice is born of faith, II, 246- 
250; justice and sanctity, II, 
251-253; actual and _ interior 
justice opposed to legal and 
eschatological justice, II, 458- 


459 
Justification : general idea, I, 168- 
169; by faith, I, 169-180; nature 
and the Law _ powerless to 
justify, I, 194-204 
Kingdom of God, II, 28. See 
Eschatology 


Last End. See Eschatology 

Last Judgement. See Eschatology 

Law, Mosaic, See Mosaic Law 

Law, various meanings of the 
word, I, 225-226 

Lawsuits between Christians, I 
103-105 


, 


ALPHABETICAL INDEX 


Letters of Paul: general char- 
acteristics, I, 62-64; letters or 
epistles? I, 64-68; style, I, 68- 
71. See also Epistles, and cf. 
references under the name of 
each 

Lord, Christ’s proper name, II, 
437-438. See Jesus Christ 


Marriage: fully lawful, I, 107- 
110; less perfect than virginity, 
I, 110-112; indissoluble, I, 112; 
Pauline privilege, I, 112-115; 
Sacrament, II, 271-274 

Meanings of Scripture, I, 22-23 

Morality: principles and bases, 
Li, 311-321; ‘social, Il, 321-332; 
individual, II, 332-343; way of 
the counsels, II, 343-344 

Mosaic Law: role of, I, 182-187; 
régime of, childhood of humani- 
ty, I, 184- 187, II, 99-104; auxili- 
ary of sin, I, 224-233; abolished, 
nailed to the Cross, ii. 223-229 

Mystery: Biblical and profane 
meaning, II, 383-385; alleged 
borrowings of St Paul from 
Pagan mysteries, II, 385-390 

Mystery, Great, I, 308-309, II, 
283-285 

Mystical Body of Christ, I, 300- 
308 ; foundation of morality, II, 
285-288 


Onesimus, I, 278-280 

Order of Intention and Order of 
Execution, II, 85-89 

Orders, Sacrament of, II, 268-271. 
See Hierarchy 


Parousta: Meaning, II, 370-372; 
near prospect of, I, 71-72; them 
that are alive at, I, 73-75 

Pastorals : authenticity, I, 325-333, 
466-470; historical setting, I, 
333-330; errors attacked, I, 336- 
341; decision of Biblical Com- 
mission, I, 472; analysis, I, 
516-520 

Paul, St: education at Tarsus and 
effect of Hellenist surroundings, 
I, 12-17; education at Jerusalem 
and rabbinical influence, I, 17- 
24; persecutor of the Church, I, 
24-25; converted on the road to 
Damascus, I, 25-29; first mission 
with Barnabas, I, 42-44; as- 
sembly at Jerusalem on the ques- 
tion of legal observances; I, 


507 


44-50; incident at Antioch be- 
tween Peter and Paul, I, 50-53; 
preacher and missionary, I, 53- 
61. See Discourses. He writes 
to the Thessalonians, I, 62-86; to 
the Corinthans, I, 87-162; to the 
Galatians, I, 163-186; to the 
Romans, I, 189-268 ; to the Colos- 
sians, I, 280-299; to Philemon, 
I, 275-279; to the Ephesians, I, 
300-309; to the Philippians, I, 
310-322; to Timothy and Titus, 
I, 325-352; inspires the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, I, 355-362 
Paulsand the Stimulus carnts, 

or sting in the flesh, I, 158-160. 
Paul and Jesus. See Jesus and 
Paul. Theologies of St Paul, 
Il, 477 

Paul’s Gospel: in what it consists, 
II, 3-11, 398-399; its elements, 
ll, 11-13 

Paulinism : definition, II, 3-4; its 
object and elements, II, 4-13; 
Christ is its centre and 
summary, II, 13-22; influence of 
Judaism, II, 36-37; of Hellen- 
ism, II, 37-40; of the Oriental 
religions, II, 40-43; its true 
sources, II, 43-44; I, 4-29; pro- 
gress of the revelations, I, 29-36 

Perfection, Christian, II, 343-351 

Pharaoh. See Hardening of Heart 

Philemon, Epistle to, I, 275-279 

Philippians, Epistle to, I, 310-311; 
analysis, I, 510511 

Plan, Redeeming. See Redeeming 
Plan 

Potter, analogy of 
Hardening of Heart 

Prayer, 115-6340-341, 
Christ 

Predestinate, to: meaning, I, 433- 
434 

Prescience and predestination, I, 
249-259, 443-450; doctrine of St 
Augustine, I, 259-262, 450-454 

Prescience : meaning, I. 435-436 

Priests: names, I, 342; qualities, 
T, 342-345 

Privilege, Pauline. See Marriage 

Promises, divine, II, 96-99 

Prophecy, charisma, 1, 129-130 

Psychology of Paul : Biblical basis, 
II, 47-49 ; Hellenic contributions, 
II, 49-52; the human composite, 
II, 52-55; eclectic language, II, 
55-57; inward and outward man, 
II, 51-2. See Soul, Spirit, Body, 
Flesh, Heart 

Purpose, divine, I, 434-435 


the. See 


See Jesus 


508 


Quotations from the Old Testa- 
ment: lists of, I, 411-414 and 


476 (Hebrews); method of 
quoting, I, 414-417 and 476 
(Hebrews) 


Ransom. See Redemption 

Reconciliation with God: mean- 
ing, II, 214-217; how procured, 
217-221 

Redeeming death: subjective 
value, II, 188-190; objective 
value, II, 190-199; explanation 
of the Fathers, II, 199-200 

Redeeming mission of Christ, II, 
161-171 

Redeeming Plan: conditions it 
must fulfil, I, 208-210; salvation 
through the Gospel, I, 204-208; 
in the order of intention and in 
the order of execution, II, 85-89; 
extension of, II, 89-94 

Redemption : meaning of the word, 
I, 432-433; theories of, II, 190- 
199; principle of solidarity, II, 
200-208, 446-447; doctrinal syn- 
thesis of the, II, 200-213; 
patristic theories, II, 442-443 


Regeneration. See Baptism and 
Morality 

Reprobation, I, 454-455 

Resurrection: assurance, I, 133- 


13§; various proofs, I, 135-136, 
II, 360-364; soteriological value, 
II, 208-211 ; state of the glorified 
body, I, 138-141 

Revelation. See Paulinism 

Romans, Epistle to: general idea, 
I, 189-194; analysis, I, 482-489; 
Church of Rome, I, 189-190 


Sacraments, II, 254, 350-352. See 
Baptism, Confirmation, Eucha- 
rist, Order, Marriage 

Sacrifice of Christ. See Jesus 
Christ and Eucharist. 

Salvation. See Gospel, Redeem- 
ing Plan 

Sanctification. See Redemption 

Satan, Empire of, II, 60-62. See 
Demons 

Scandalous Christians, I, 99-102 

Scripture, meanings of. See 
Meanings 

Self-stripping of Christ or Keno- 
sts, I, 316-322 

Sin: various names, I, 212; 
original, I, 213-219; II, 57-59; 
reign of, II, 59-60; overcome by 
Christ, I, 218-219; II, 221-223 


THE THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL 


Slaves, I, 275-278; and masters, II, 
326-328 

Solidarity, principle of, II, 200- 
208. See Redemption 

Son of God, II, 140-142. See Jesus 
Christ 

Soul: notion of the word, II, 404- 
405; and spirit, II, 53-55 

Spirit, Holy. See Holy Spirit 

Spirit: meaning of the word, II, 
405-407; and soul, II, 53-55; 
and the letter, Il, 439-441 

Stages of humanity, II, 89-110 

Stoicism, alleged borrowings from, 
II, 37-40, 470 

Substitution, Penal. 
tion 


See Redemp- 


Theology, Biblical: definition, I, 
1-2; methods of, I, 2-4. See 
Paulinism 

Thessalonians, Epistles to: vain 
fears of the converts, I, 71-75; 
how the Apostle reassures them, 
I, 75-78, 80-83; analysis of, I, 
513-516 

Trinity in St Paul, II, 132-138; 
God the Father, II, 138-140; 
God the Son, II, 140-142; God 
the Holy Ghost, II, 142-146; 
chief Trinitarian texts, II, 431- 
434 


Unbelief, dangers of, I, 391-393 


Veiling of women in church, I, 
119-122 

Vices, II, 337-340; 
virtues, II, 469-470 

Virginity, I, 110-112 

Virtues: theological, II, 332-337; 
moral, II, 337-340; charity, II, 
333-337, 470-4723; little virtues, 
II, 341-343; virtues and vices, 
II, 469-470 

Vocation, divine : meaning, I, 436 


vices and 


Widows, Order of, I, 349-352 

Will to save, the, II, 77-80; Will 
of God, aspects of, II, 80-82; 
foundation of morality, II, 313- 
318 

Wisdom, divine and human, I, g1- 


93 

World, meaning of word, II, 
419-421 

World, present and to come, II, 
62-66 

Wrath of God: meaning, II, 214- 
217 









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